Weather Talk: Tonight's Supermoon not all that super

Tonight is the latest incarnation of the Supermoon! Unfortunately, it will likely be cloudy, but it's nothing to fret about. A so-called Supermoon is when the full moon happens at or near its closest approach to Earth. The moon's orbit is not circular, but elliptical, so its distance from Earth varies by about 30,000 miles. This results in about a 14 percent variance in the apparent size of the moon and about a 30 percent variance in the brightness. However, the full moon is always very bright, making this difference not all that noticeable. If it were possible to place the closest full moon next to the one most distant, the difference could be easily seen. But we only get one moon at a time, and our ability to distinguish one full moon from another is rather limited. Any full moon is spectacular and worthy of a few minutes of our time to view.