What is the importance of a Leap Day? Local expert weighs in

BOWLING GREEN, Ky. – We see it roll around every four years, but many of us are probably ignorant to what purpose a Leap Day actually serves.

Leap Day has been around since the Roman times, meaning it’s hundreds of years old. While drafting the calendar, there was a miscalculation concerning the Earth’s orbit, which is actually 365.24 days, as opposed to the nice round 365 that we all know.

To account for this extra time it takes to fully lap the sun, Leap Day and Leap Years were born, giving February an extra day every four years to account for the extra 5 hours, 48 minutes and 56 seconds.

Shane Holinde, the outreach manager of Kentucky Mesonet, says without a Leap Day, the seasonal equinoxes would be thrown “completely out of whack.” In other words, Holinde says we would eventually see summer in the middle of winter.

But if you do the math, you’ll see that over four years, that would only put the “sidereal year” at 23.26 hours, so to fix that problem, Leap Year is skipped every turn of the century that is divisible for 100 but not by 400, meaning that years like 1700 would not fit the bill.

The next Leap Year that will be skipped will be 2100.