If you think of the average high subtracted by the average high for the year in Albany as a sine wave, the phase goes positive around April 17th. ☀

The earth acts as a giant inductor for solar radiation as it takes time for the earth to heat or cold, which means that the average high temperature in Albany is 22 days out of sync with the position of the sun, making the high temperature departure curve is roughly 21.6 degrees out of phase from the sun although that’s not quite accurate around autumn as the sine wave that measures temperature departure is flatter than the position of the sun, because of the inductance of the earth and because not all heat from the earth is radiated back to space.