Normally (since early post-college days still living back east), I’d typically just suddenly notice this right around August 11 (Perseid meteor time!), but as I get older it’s “hitting” me sooner, it seems.
These “slanty rays” seem to be somehow related to a long-term biorhythmic thing, where a combination of time-of-day and angle-of-
sunlight registers as a rather direct perception of time-of-year. …
( + Only tangentially related: … One summer some years ago, upon having just returned home from a week or so in Hawaii, I got up from a jet-lag daytime nap in mid-afternoon & looked outside and, BAM! — It just blew me away how far NORTH we now were, and how “wintry” it seemed out there! — instant sense of change! )
This onset of the slanty rays — and the perception thereof — comes on much more gradually, yet at some distinct point arrives at a sort of “tipping point”. … good project for biol. grad. students?! … )
In this latest case “just in” from within the past few days or so here in Santa Cruz (near the end of July), part of its earlier-than-usual occurrence may well have to do with the preponderance of cloudiness we’ve been experiencing for more than a week now, which has made it harder for one’s senses & systems to “shoot a good angle” (perceptually) with the incoming sunlight. We had some clear sun for a few hours, and once again this realization in the visual realm just happened, without my having been looking for (or thinking about) it. ( ! *** )
+ Happy “August-Eve” ! … In fact, we’re now coming right up on one of the four “cross-quarter days” of the year – roughly mid-way between solstice and equinox! 8/1 joins Halloween, Ground Hog Day, and May Day. ***