February 2024 Has An Extra Day, But Why Add A ‘Leap Day’?

NOT SO FAST FEBRUARY.

You have one more day this year.

A poem about Leap Year

Mother Goose

Thirty days hath September,
April, June and November.
All the rest have thirty-one,
Excepting February alone,
And that has twenty-eight days clear
And twenty-nine in each leap year.

February has always been an odd month.

Sorry February (but it's true). You only have 28 days.

Except on a Leap Year.

Every four years we slap an extra day on the end of February..

And, you guessed it, 2024 is a Leap Year.

If you think about it for a moment, these rare extra days are the only times some people, born on leap day, get to celebrate their birthdays.

Let's have a look at how this works.

This year we get an extra day on Thursday, Feb. 29, 2024.

The next Leap Day will happen in 2028.

The next one is 2032.

For those people born on that day, do you think they don't age like the rest of us? I'm curious.

From the TV show Parks And Rec'. The assistant messes up the Mother Goose Poem.

This is all because the Earth's orbit is never perfect.

Over time the planet is slowing its spin and our orbit around the sun alters a bit over time.

A typical year is just a little over 365 days. But not exactly.

Currently, it's 365 days 5 hours 48 minutes, and 56 seconds, according to the National Aeronautics and Space Museum.

We try to make up for that time with a Leap Day every 4 years.

It almost works. But not quite. A Leap Second is thrown in now and then.

If we did nothing then the seasons would begin to drift and soon summer would be in the middle of December.

You could say that we just add an extra day to your life every 4 years. That's not true but, we could say it anyway.