January Full Wolf Moon Is Also A ‘Micromoon’: What You Need To Know

ACROSS AMERICA — For a fun start to 2023, gather your family and friends and go outside and howl at the full wolf moon Friday, when our lunar satellite reaches peak illumination. In New York City, that’s anytime between moonrise at 4:16 p.m. and moonset at 7:28 a.m. Saturday.

If you accept the challenge, you won’t be howling just for the sake of howling — though people all over the country let it rip during the early days of the pandemic. The January full moon gets its moniker from Native American tribes because wolves howled outside their villages, but references are also found in Colonial American and European culture, according to The Old Farmer’s Almanac.

A little more about that later, but first, Friday’s full moon is what’s called a micromoon, or the opposite of a supermoon. What it means is that the full moon is in “apogee,” that is, the point in its elliptical orbit when it’s farthest from Earth — about 252,600 miles away.

As the moon moves away from Earth, it appears smaller and less bright. The big difference between micromoons and other full moons, according to The Old Farmer’s Almanac, is that when the moon is high above the horizon, “it may not appear to loom over us the way it appears when it’s near the horizon.”

Apogee and “perigee” — the point in its orbit when the moon is closest to Earth — don’t always coincide with full moons.

And wolves don’t just howl the night of a full wolf moon, and they don’t howl because they’re hungry, as was long believed.

Rather, there is purpose behind wolf howls and other vocalizations. It’s their way of communicating to define territory, locate pack members, coordinate hunting and socialize.

“They call any time of the day, but they are most easily heard in the evening when the wind dies down and wolves are most active,” according to the International Wolf Center.

Wolf vocalizations are broken into four categories: barking, whimpering, growling and howling.

Howling is used when wolves want to send a long-distance message.

“A defensive howl is used to keep the pack together and strangers away, to stand their ground and protect young pups who cannot yet travel from danger, and protect kill sites,” the Wolf Center explains. “A social howl is used to locate one another, rally together and possibly just for fun.”

So let’s get out there with our best social howls.