Winter is officially here. It began at 9:27 Thursday night with the arrival of the winter solstice.
Phil Grigsby, lead forecaster with the National Weather Service office in Slidell, says the main thing is "that the earth itself is tilted on its axis, actually what drives out seasons."
He says, "This time of year, the way that the axis is tilted is that the sun shines more directly on the southern hemisphere and more indirectly on the northern hemisphere. Because of that, the temperatures become cooler."
Right now, places like Australia and South America are in the summer solstice where temperatures reach their warmest and the daylight is at its peak.
Grigsby says there have been celebrations globally on the arrival of each of the solstices.
He says, "Christmas is tied in somewhat, you know, indirectly with the solstice, that's why it occurs this time of year because it was related to a Roman holiday that was around the period of the solstice and so Christians adopted Christmas during that time frame to basically, you know, to say hey, let's celebrate Christ Jesus instead of the god Saturn, and stuff like that."
