If you want to check out the last full moon of the winter, look skyward on March 7 when the Worm Moon rises, signaling the start of an era of blood and chaos that will last for a thousand years! Wait, I mean the imminent approach of spring.
The third and final full moon of the winter will be at its biggest and brightest on Tuesday, March 7 at 7:42 A.M. ET, but it will be plenty big and bright the nights before and after too.
It’s the “Lenten” moon
March’s full moon is a Lenten moon—the last full Moon before the spring equinox. It’s the cosmic opposite of the “Harvest moon.” If you go out right after sunset and don’t see the moon, don’t worry, the moon hasn’t forsaken us—at this time of year, the time between successive moonrises reaches its yearly maximum, leaving the longest period after sunset when neither the sun nor the moon is in the sky. To find the moon in the sky, look to the east after the sunset and further west as the night goes on. Or you can just look for the gigantic orb floating in space, shedding way more light than anything else. It’s the full moon. It’s not hiding.
Why is it called the “Worm Moon?”
The name “Worm Moon” comes from indigenous Americans, and was first noted by Captain Jonathan Carver. Carver was among the first Europeans to visit various tribes in the midwest, and according to Carver, the worms in question are not earthworms, but the beetle larvae that emerge from the bark of trees as they thaw this time of year.
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According to the Old Farmer’s Almanac, other names for March’s moon include “The Sugar Moon,” because this is the time of year the sap of sugar maple trees starts flowing; “The Wind Strong Moon,” because it’s windy at this time of year where the Pueblo people once lived; and “Crow Comes Back Moon,” for fairly obvious reasons. In my opinion, the most evocative name for March’s moon is “The Sore Eyes Moon.” It references the bright moonlight that reflects off melting ice and snow.
Random awesome moon fact
The first fictional account of a trip to the moon is contained in Lucian of Samosata’s True Stories. Lucian was born around 125 AD, and True Stories is a satire of Homer’s Odyssey. The lunar explorers in True Stories are sailors who are carried to the moon on a waterspout. Upon their arrival, they meet a race of three-headed vultures—the first instance of fictional aliens—and become embroiled in a war between Endymion, the king of the Moon, and Phaethon, the king of the Sun.
