measured difference in azimuth of Sun?

Aditya Naredi wrote:

Hi everyone,

A few days back I heard from my hometown in India that people
observed a 'northern shift' of Sun during sunrise. This happened
around July 17th (2003). Unbelievable as it seemed, I proceeded to
measure it myself as follows..

[snip]

Can someone please measure Sun's azimuth at their places and let me
know if it differs from calculated azimuth or not? If it is, what are
the possible explanations? If not, what am I doing wrong?

The first thing I'd suspect is that the sunrise positions you looked
up were just the "geometrical" azimuths. Atmospheric refraction and
other effects not included in such figures can make a very large
difference to the observed position. Moreover, I imagine that looking
north-east from Seattle the horizon is pretty mountainous; you might
do better trying to observe sunsets over the Juan de Fuca Strait.

--
Odysseus