lyonheart wrote:Hi Isaac Newton,
Very good point!
Because Safehold is much colder than earth and the fact the Northland Gap is around 54 degrees north, I expect the thaw will be well into April, probably around the middle if not nearer the end of the month depending on the weather this year, which is why the AoG didn't march out last year until May when the roads were clear and dry.
Imagine Clyntahn's reaction to the weather delaying all the new weapons and reinforcements a critical 5day or two, or three.
Are the weather gods/or archangels, against the jihad?
One reason I like using the canal for ice boats is that the canal walls would shield much of the bottom ice from the sun more than that ice directly exposed on the land round about, being at the right south west angle [~45 degrees?] only in the late afternoon, while also sheltering the colder air lingering in the bottom of the canal, besides the still freezing night air that would refreeze the ice quickly for use the rest of the night, probably resurfacing it and keeping it a flatter, smoother surface than it otherwise might be.
The only qualitative reference to Safehold's axial tilt is here: viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2198#p43133
The textev uses only the phrase "Its axial tilt was a bit more pronounced" and the poster speculates that this is in the range of 25 to 30 degrees.
OK, with our own axial tilt of 23.5 degrees, we have tropics covering 47 degrees (tropic to tropic) and arctic/antarctic zones of 23.5 degrees each. The temperate zones are therefore each 43 degrees "across".
At a 25 degree axial tilt, the temperate zone drops to 40 degrees across and this falls to 30 degrees with a 30 degree tilt. Now that is a wide tropical belt and a narrow temperate zone. 54 degrees North would be VERY cold in winter.
A 25 degree tilt is enough to make 54 degrees North still pretty cold but would leave the tropics at a more manageable size, given all of the observations RFC has made in the text about distances and climates in some of the "well-trodden" locations.
Assuming then that 25 degrees is about right, the maximum elevation of the sun at midday at 54 degrees North latitude would range from 36 degrees at the Equinox to 11 degrees at the Winter Solstice.
These figures would be even more extreme with a 30 degree tilt.
The sun will never be at more than a low elevation in the late afternoon, even at the Equinox, which is when the thaw is anticipated. I know that, by 45 degrees, you meant azimuth rather than altitude but we need to consider where the sun is in the sky as well as its compass bearing.
On that basis, the canal beds will be nice and gloomy/cold and perfect for ice boats. Only when the sun is very low in the south-west (actually nearer to west just before the Equinox) would there be any illumination (if the canal directions are favourable, of course) but very little warmth.
