Leap Year!

We have an extra day in February this month! Leap year brings us February 29th, something that only happens very 4 years.

I used to get so confused, is a regular year 364 years and a leap year is 365 or does a leap year add a day to the claimed 365 days of the year. The answer I finally researched one day, a leap year is 366 days. Duh! some of you might say, but really I had no idea until I did some research.


I always just took leap year as nothing special, just a year with an extra day, a day that made for great jokes about birthday age for people born on February 29th, a day that in general, meant nothing really.

So one year, I took an interest in WHY we have leap year. Was is just a joke someone decided would be funny for those with birthdays, was it someones laziness in the past that forgot a day on a calendar and decided they would just add it back in one year, why do we really have this extra day??

So first off, Leap Year isn't technically every 4 years, for the most part it is, but there are years that will NOT fall into this (it's math, all math and kinda technical).

So WHY the leap year?? Leap Years are needed to keep our calendar in alignment with the Earth's revolutions around the sun. It takes the Earth approximately 365.242199 days – or 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 46 seconds (a tropical year) – to circle once around the Sun.

If we did not have a leap year, after 100 years our calendar would be down to only 24 days! So to keep us on the 365 calendar to make sure we hit our seasons at the right time and that day and night stay consistent, we need an extra 24 hours every 4 years!

Can you imagine a year with only 24 days???