Weathercatch: Summer solstice means the sun is the true star of the show

Wednesday marked the summer solstice, when the Northern Hemisphere basks in more daylight than any other day of the year. In Spokane, the sun is now up for just under 16 hours. In contrast, the winter solstice in December sees about 8 hours of daylight.

Days will shrink gradually, so there’s no need to worry about a jarring descent into darkness. Many of us won’t notice decreasing daylight until later in July, when the weather will be consistently hotter because it takes time for land and water to absorb summertime’s heat.

For now, half of the earth is maximally tilted toward the sun. So what better time to ponder our planet’s life-sustaining source of light and warmth? As the sun works overtime on the Inland Northwest, here are some interesting facts:

•The sun is a star, and it’s the only one in our solar system. Although it is the closest star to earth, it’s located nearly 93 million miles away. The sun’s closest neighboring star is the much smaller Proxima Centauri.

•The sun is the largest object in our solar system. Measuring 864,000 miles in diameter, it is 109 times wider than Earth. In other words, if the sun were a hollow ball, it would take about 1 million planet earths to fill it, according to NASA solar scientist C. Alex Young.

•The sun’s core runs at about 27 million degrees Fahrenheit and then cools down to 10,340 degrees at the surface. Curiously, the atmosphere around the sun – tendrils of plasma known as the corona – is far hotter than the surface, registering at more than 1.8 million degrees. This spike in heat, despite being farther away from the sun’s core, remains a puzzle in the field of astrophysics. Just what is heating the solar atmosphere to such blistering temperatures? Theories include intermittent explosive bursts of heat and massive magnetic waves.

•From here on Earth, the sun appears stable, but there are loads of volatility on our closest star. Jounced by eruptions and fierce bursts of radioactive waves, the sun’s surface spews solar material throughout the solar system. This can trigger space storms capable of damaging satellites, disrupting radio communications and interfering with power grids.

•As we write this, NASA’s Parker Solar Probe spacecraft is zipping in and out of the solar atmosphere in an effort to help us better understand how the sun works and its influence on Earth.

How is the sun expected to influence the Inland Northwest during the next few days? Real summer weather is returning. Intense late-June sunshine, combined with a warming air mass, will produce much warmer temperatures than those that prompted us to cover our garden tomatoes earlier this week. Thursday we should see mostly sunny skies with temperatures in the upper 70s. Friday and into the weekend, expect plenty of sunshine with temperatures in the low to mid-80s.

Nic Loyd is a meteorologist in Washington state. Linda Weiford is a writer in Moscow, Idaho, who’s also a weather geek.