Look Up

It’s hard not to notice the moon getting bigger. It’s full Saturday. For those of us in San Mateo, the moon will rise just after 4:30 p.m. It will officially become full at 8:37 p.m. and will set just after 7 a.m., Sunday. It will be rising before the sunsets and will set just before the sunrises, so it will be really noticeable over the next few nights.

You might recall from previous Look Ups, each month has a traditional moon name, usually the names describe the changing of the seasons or what animals might be doing during the change of the seasons. The traditional names used by Almanac.com mainly come from Native Americans, who used the names to track the seasons. December describes the coming of winter and is called the full Cold Moon. This is the name used by the Mohawk Indians, who live in Canada, primarily around Lake Ontario. Another full moon name that describes the season is Drift Clearing Moon used by the Cree, North American indigenous people who primarily live in Canada. Drift clearing describes how snow looks in the winter. Other names used by the Cree were Frost Exploding Trees Moon and Hoar Frost Moon. Moon of the Popping Trees is what the Oglala, a subtribe of the Lakota, Native Americans who originally populated all of the Rocky Mountain ranges but were pushed out to Missouri and South Dakota, is what they used for the season. While the Cherokee, Native Americans of the south, and the Haida, an indigenous group of British Columbia, both called it the Snow Moon. Lastly, the Mahicans, Native Americans of New York, called it the Long Night Moon.