Moon calendar for February 2027

Day by day

Key days of the month

Two hours of daylight returned

Look west after twilight late in the month, on an evening without a moon, and you may catch the zodiacal light - a faint cone of dust along the ecliptic, regularly mistaken for the glow of a distant town. There is time for that sort of thing now: daylight comes back at four or five minutes a day, close to two hours across the month, and by the second half it shows on the walk home. Orion has already swung west by ten while Leo climbs in the east.

Snow Moon, Hunger Moon

Hunger Moon is the blunt one, and the one that earned its keep: it comes from the weeks when the stores had run down and nothing had come up yet. The almanacs prefer Snow Moon, February being the snowiest month across much of North America, and Celtic tradition offers Storm Moon for the same stretch - three names, one hungry, cold, wet February. Every so often the month has no full moon at all, because a lunar month runs longer than February does; the last was 2018 and the next is 2037.

February's postbag

Sowing starts under glass now, so the questions turn practical: chillies, aubergines, early tomatoes, and which days to choose. Tradition puts anything fruiting on a waxing moon and anything rooting on a waning one; it is a memorable rule with no evidence behind it, so we point at the phase rather than at a list of blessed dates. The missing-full-moon question turns up here too, usually from someone who has just noticed the gap.

The Moon’s position is astronomy; the beliefs and interpretations are tradition, not scientific fact.