February's silver lining: The days get longer as the month creeps on

February is the shortest month, but it has a way of feeling like the longest. Its 28 days can feel like a year as we inch toward spring with increasing hopefulness and impatience about all the splendor to come.
On the coldest, dreariest days of February, it can be helpful to look for silver linings, and one such silver lining is that the days are getting longer. Each day, we are adding more and more daylight, with the sun rising earlier and setting later as February progresses. On Feb. 1, the sun rises at 7:03 a.m. and sets and 5:08 p.m., giving us 10 hours, 5 minutes of daylight. When the month comes to its much-anticipated end, the sun rises at 6:28 a.m. and sets at 5:42. That's 11 hours, 14 minutes of daylight — more than an hour more than at the start of the month!
These gradual increase in sunlight will continue — with one big jump when the clocks change in March — until the summer solstice, which will be on June 20 this year. On that day, we will experience 15 hours, 13 minutes of daylight — more than five hours more than we do at the start of February.
Other than welcoming these later sunsets, February is a quiet month for sky watching. After a busy few months, meteor shower activity won't pick up again until April, when the Lyrids meteor shower begins April 17. And the planets won't be aligning in any unusual or rare patterns, giving us opportunities to view them in unique ways.
The month's full moon will be on Feb. 12, reaching its fullest point at 7:53 a.m. It will be below the horizon at this point, but it will appear full in the night sky on both the night of Feb. 11 and 12, according to The Old Farmer's Almanac.
The most commonly used nickname for the February full moon is the snow moon. Not surprisingly, this nickname relates to the often-snowy weather historically associated with February. It turns out, though, that February is not the snowiest month in the Chicago County Warning Area, a 23-county region in northeastern Illinois and northwestern Indiana that includes Will County. That honor goes to January, which averages 11.3 inches of snow, according to the National Weather Service. To be fair, February is not far behind, averaging 10.7 inches of snow per month.
If we wanted to bestow a new nickname on the February full moon to better reflect its standing as only the second snowiest month in Chicago, there are plenty of options. The nicknames for our full moons are often the names used by Native tribes, and these name often reflect seasonal happenings and occurrences. Many of the February moon names used by Native tribes are tied to animals. Some Algonquian people called it the groundhog moon, while the Cree referred to it as the bald eagle moon or eagle moon, The Old Farmer's Almanac reports. For the Dakota, the February full moon is known as the raccoon moon. The Ojibwe refer to its as the bear moon, while the Tlingit call it the black bear moon, both references to the time of year when bear cubs are typically born.
The February full moon is just an ordinary full moon. It's not a supermoon or a micromoon. In March, though, the full moon will be a total lunar eclipse. Mark your calendars — and hope for clear skies — for March 14, when the so-called blood moon will adorn the evening sky.
A lunar eclipse occurs when the moon, Earth and sun are perfectly aligned so that Earth's shadow is cast on the moon, National Geographic reports. A lunar eclipse can only occur during a full moon, and it is called a blood moon because the phenomenon causes the moon to have a reddish tint.