The winter season closed on 28 February with 148 sessions at 27 points, the most we have logged in a winter. November was mostly lost to rain, so the work bunched up around the new moons of 20 December, 18 January and 17 February.
Winter against winter
| Point | 2024–25 | 2025–26 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Politeama, Palermo | 17.33 | 17.30 | −0.03 |
| Kalsa, Palermo | 17.76 | 17.74 | −0.02 |
| Catania centre | 17.52 | 17.49 | −0.03 |
| Cefalù seafront | 19.71 | 19.74 | +0.03 |
| Ragusa Ibla | 19.18 | 19.03 | −0.15 |
| Piano Battaglia | 21.62 | 21.63 | +0.01 |
A negative change means the sky got brighter. Changes smaller than 0.1 are within our margin of error.
Ragusa Ibla
Of the 20 points with two full winters of data, 19 moved by less than 0.1, which tells us nothing. Ragusa Ibla moved by 0.15, so its sky is about 15% brighter than a year ago. Salvo, who measures there, points at the new white floodlights along the valley road. That is plausible, but one season is one season. We will wait for the summer figures before saying more.
Best and worst nights
The darkest reading of the season was 21.71 at Piano Battaglia on 18 January: −3 °C, a dry north wind, no snow on the ground. The brightest was 17.08 at Politeama on 20 December, with the Christmas lights up and haze over the city.
What went wrong
Nine sessions from Trapani are not in these figures. At the November comparison, meter 6 read 0.31 high after a fall onto a stone step. We could not tell when the fault began, so everything it logged since its previous check is excluded. The sessions remain in the raw log, with the reason next to them, and the meter has been replaced.
Next up is a concentrated spring campaign at all eight Palermo points, which began this week.