Halloween in the year 2020 won’t be normal (because of course, it won’t). In fact, this year there will likely be a ‘blue moon,’ according to EarthSky.
The moon will “be the second of two full moons to occur in a single calendar month,” making it a blue moon, which can also be “the third of four full moons in a single season, with a season being between a solstice and equinox.”
“In recent years, people have been using the name blue moon for these two different sorts of moons: second of two full moons in a calendar month, or third of four full moons in a single season,” according to EarthSky.
The last blue moon happened on March 31, 2018, according to EarthSky.
But a blue moon occurred in May 2019, too. It was actually full May “flower” moon — known as the Corn Planting Moon and the Milk moon. It was considered a “blue” moon as well, as I wrote for Deseret.com.
Of course, the moon won’t actually be blue. It’s just the name of the moon.
“The name ‘blue moon’ has nothing to do with the color of the moon,” Gianluca Masi, astrophysicist and director of the Virtual Telescope Project in Rome, told CNN in 2019. “Every two to three years we have 13 full moons within a year. This way, we can have four full moons during a given season or two full moons in a given month.”
So yes, 2020 — a year that seems like it will never end and yet seems like it is going by super fast all at once — will have an unique moon, too.
What a year.
As ComicBook.com puts it, “While the upcoming lunar event might not be as exceptional as the name implies, the coronavirus pandemic is causing complications around the world in a number of ways and surely the upcoming holiday season will be unconventional, to say the least.”