It's a correction to counter the fact that Earth's orbit isn't precisely 365 days a year. But that correction sometimes needs its own correction!
NORFOLK, Va. — Today is “Leap Day,” February 29.
Almost every four years, we add a day to our shortest month to keep our calendars in sync with the seasons and the Earth’s orbit, so the next time we have a leap year will be 2028.
While we think of a year as having 365 days, it actually takes 365.24219 days -- or 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 56 seconds -- for the Earth to complete its orbit.
That extra quarter of a day? That’s our “leap day” that we add every four years.
But notice it’s not quite a full six hours. So by adding a day every four years, we add a little too much time and we occasionally have to skip the leap!
The math is a little complicated, but every 100 years, we skip the leap... unless the year is evenly divisible by 400. So, we skipped the leap in the years 1800 and 1900, but not in 2000.
That means we will next skip the leap in the year 2100.
We'll see you then!
