BREAKING NEWS: The Sun Is Out
“Is that the sun, or is it just me?”
A reader has asked ELi to investigate. So, we just checked the National Weather Service’s website and also looked outside, and we can confirm: the sun is out in East Lansing – for the first time since last year.
Social media indicates irrational exuberance among area residents.
Weather Spark, an online service that aggregates climatology data from NASA, has this to say about our local climate: “In East Lansing, the average percentage of the sky covered by clouds experiences significant seasonal variation over the course of the year.”
The clearest part of the year starts in late May and lasts for 5 months, ending around Halloween. The sunniest month in East Lansing is August.
And the cloudiest month here? January.
In an average January, the East Lansing sky is overcast or mostly cloudy about two-thirds of the time. January is also the coldest month, with an average low of 18 degrees Fahrenheit and an average high of just 31 degrees.
To get a medical doctor’s perspective on this sunny day, we reached out to Aron Sousa, M.D., Dean of Michigan State University’s College of Human Medicine, because he lives with this reporter and was consequently easy to corner.
Sousa says area residents will not need to worry about using sunscreen today, so that’s some more good news.
Asked if people could make up for all their recent Vitamin D loss by going for a brisk walk in today’s sun, Sousa, whose specialty is internal medicine, said, “It’s always good to go for a brisk walk, but most people will get no appreciable Vitamin D from the January sun in East Lansing.”
“However,” he added, “that doesn’t mean everyone needs to be taking Vitamin D supplements. The data is complicated and you should make your doctor look at the Vitamin D and supplementation data and go over it with you.” (He just doesn’t want to take this reporter to Florida.)
ELi also asked Sousa if it is possible that people are delirious and we are all just imagining the sun at this point.
“Seeing the sun is rarely a manifestation of delirium,” he said. “If you see people turning into lizards or think the downtown bar scene is being run by lizards, you are probably delirious.”
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