This Supplemental Information File complements the Daily Summary for
Welcome to the month of November, a month of rapidly decreasing daylight, falling temperatures and increased winter-like storm activity. The name of the month comes from the word "novem" meaning nine, since this was the ninth month in an early Roman calendar that commenced the year at the time of the spring equinox in March.
If you own a sundial you may have noticed that recently sun time has been running almost 17 minutes faster than your watch. Saturday represents the greatest departure during the year between the actual sun and the mean sun used by time keepers. The actual sun is not as accurate as a clock in keeping time because the non-uniform motions of the sun across the sky caused by the earth moving around the sun in an elliptical orbit and the tilt of the earth's spin axis.
This difference is noticeable in that sunrise and sunset times are not symmetric about noon. The earliest sunset at most locales in the Northern Hemisphere will occur at the end of the first week of December rather than on the winter solstice because the sun is still "running fast" as compared to the clock.
If you are worried about the sun running fast, by mid February the sun will be running approximately 14 minutes slower than clock time.
The irregular figure eight that often appears printed on the ocean portion of a globe (called an "analemma") depicts the seasonal swings. Right now we are at one of the bulges on the bottom loop.