Weather Tidbits: Supermoon

This edition of Weather Tidbits discusses supermoons. Firstly, it’s important to point out that the moon’s orbit around Earth is not a perfect circle. It’s actually in the shape of an ellipse. This means that there will be a point during the moon’s orbit where the moon will be closer to the earth than at other times. When the moon is at its farthest point from earth during its orbit, it’s at apogee, which is 253,000 miles. When the moon is at its closest point to earth, the moon is at perigee, which is 226,000 miles. A supermoon occurs when the full moon phase coincides with the moon being at perigee. So the fact that the moon is closer toward earth at this time is the reason why a supermoon looks bigger and brighter from Earth than regular full moons.