You probably know by now that spring started today, at 2:35am EST. Here's what actually happened at that time.

To start, we have to locate the time zone where it was around noon when it was 2:35 am here. So we need to go 9 to 10 times zones east of here. Then we head to the equator. Now we're at a point in the middle of the Indian Ocean. At that location, when it was 2:35am here, the sun was directly overhead there, signaling the start of spring in the Northern Hemisphere.

Over the next three months, the latitude at which the noontime sun is overhead will move farther north, reaching almost the latitude of Key West FL, on the first day of summer. For us, this means that the sun will move higher in the sky each day, so the length of our daylight will increase from about 12 hours today to more than 15 hours by June 21.