The Seasons Are Wrong (opens in new tab)

“One sort of optional thing you might do is realize that there are six seasons instead of four. The poetry of four seasons is all wrong for this part of the planet, and this may explain why we are depressed so much of the time. I mean, spring doesn’t feel like spring a lot of the time, and November is all wrong for autumn, and so on. Here is the truth about the seasons: Spring is May and June. What could be springier than May and June? Summer is July and August. Really hot, right? Autumn is September and October. See the pumpkins? Smell those burning leaves? Next comes the season called Locking. November and December aren’t winter. They’re Locking. Next comes winter, January and February. Boy! Are they ever cold! What comes next? Not spring. ‘Unlocking’ comes next. What else could cruel March and only slightly less cruel April be? March and April are not spring. They’re Unlocking.”

—Kurt Vonnegut

Do you want to define the seasons by temperature? Or by lengthening of the day? Because, to me, seasons are tied to weather in general, but temperature specifically. And temperature seems to correlates to length of day, but trails it by about a month. Which makes sense, since it takes time to heat/cool the enormous thermal mass. So, if weather is how you track the changing of the seasons, it’s close enough to correct as-is.

”Winter was short, this year”. “Spring came early”. It does not make sense to tie these concepts to a calendar. Summer is when you dare to dip your toes in the ocean. In winter we have a meter of ice. I generally place vacation weeks in July and august, because the weather is nice and other people are on vacation as well.

The statement that the seasons are wrong, does not make sense. To tie these names to a calendar, does not make sense.

I've never thought starting seasons on the solstice/equinox made any sense, but I live in a Mediterranean climate, where winter is the two months that are chilly with continuous rain and fog, and summer is the two months where it never cools off and there's not a single cloud in the sky. These are centered around their respective equinoxes. (equinoxia? equinoctes?)

In a continental climate, with real weather, there's a lag between the day length and the temperature, so it makes more sense to start the season on the solstice/equinox.

I've lived in North America most of my life, at various latitudes and in various climates. Maybe half of the continent gets four, equal length, distinct seasons? That's enough to culturally dominate perceptions, but I have never known anyone to take the calendar-based equinox/solstice "start of {{season}}" as anything more than a conversational novelty. Even correcting adjusting the start/end dates is still inadequate when the idea of four distinct, equal seasons isn't the reality for half of the continent.

For example, when I lived in Western New York, there were four seasons for sure, but Winter was five months long, and I won't hear otherwise. Now I'm on the Gulf Coast and we don't have four seasons in the conventional sense. There are definitely five, and they're not equal length. Across six months, there is Summer Part One, The Season of August, and Summer Part Two. There is no "Winter", but there is a six-to-eight-week "cold front season" where the temperature may snap cold for 2-3 days, then gradually warms up to be mild over the next 5-7 days, and eventually snaps cold again. Repeat four or five times and this short season is over.

Plus, depending on the ENSO cycle we can have a true, mid-year "rainy season" similar to Japan, with near-daily short downpours at the same time each day (shifting slightly later in the day across the season). In the other parts of the cycle, we won't.

Start of summer.. June 21st? Is this statement true for US? Another thing to put in mind, besides Fahrenheit, yards, lbs.. at least time (besides 12 hour clock) seem to conform with the rest of the world...

Round here (GB) the standard, as reflected in decorative calendars and the like, seems to be:

Spring: Mar, Apr, May

Summer: Jun, Jul, Aug

Autumn: Sep, Oct, Nov

Winter: Dec, Jan, Feb

Works for me.

I had never even heard the idea of seasons starting on the solstices or equinoxes before. What a bizarre way to look at the year.

A lot of time cycles are rooted on what happens in the sky, not on land, because what happens on land seems to vary all the time, but what happen in the sky seem to be fixed and immutable. The day comes from the Earth rotation. the week and the month originally comes from Moon orbit and phases, the year and seasons from Earth's orbit and tilt.

The seasons in particular happens essentially in the same day in the same way across multiple years. You can put a mark, build a set of monoliths or whatever and see when you are back in that day again, regardless if it is a rainy, cold, hot or windy day. Weather is very variable, and may happen differently in different regions, but you can trust in the skies. And have a clear prediction for that was essential for any civilization based on crops and agriculture, or hunters/gatherers to know when trees will start to bear fruits and some animals come out from hibernation.

Most people are exceptionally good at differentiating between scientific (meteorological, astronomical) seasons and when it is time to spend months eating ice cream in shorts.

I'd be far more interested in learning how seasons shift due to climate change, or alternative systems based on extreme climates or other circumstances.

A quick search reveals that the Sami people appear to have 8 seasons [0], in old-timey war seasons can be divided in to fighting season and reconstitution season, aboriginal Australians had systems of 5-8 seasons [1], and the Canaries have only one season.

0 - https://kirunalapland.se/en/our-eight-seasons/

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_Australian_seasons

Seems like the seasons are a local thing.

Now, this also seems like a calculable problem. Other posters mention seasonal lag and other effects.

Guys, we have computers, we can compute this, it should be straightforward?

Grab a few data sets like rainfall, temp, solar, etc, get a map from like Google Earth or whatever, combine them and have it spit out the seasons, right?

Now, I'm not a tropical person (as in I don't live in between the tropic lines on the map), so I've no idea what the seasons are like there (summer, just always summer?), or what it is like in the Sahara or in Sweden, so I don't know if you'd then need to just come up with entirely new seasons. That would be a very local thing to name, I'd imagine. But I think that you'd be able to mostly just compute all this, right?

I've been thinking of this but I figured the start/end of seasons make a lot of sense if you think about the effect the length of days has on temperature. Essentially the length of days effects the rate of energy added by the system. For instance days are longest on June 21st but temperatures will generally keep increasing until August.

It's a bit like taking that sinusoid and integrating it resulting in a cosine shifted by a quarter of a phase.

I think Sekki, made easy by https://smallseasons.guide/, addresses this adequately. I am surprised at how closely the Japanese dates mirror actual transitions in Ireland. It's rarely off by more than a day or two, if at all. I hardly think about seasons anymore.

I actually agree. Summer starting when the days grow short makes no sense. By that time half of summer has passed.

This article does not take into consideration seasonal lag, where temperature trails behind sunlight by 4 to 8 weeks. So while the solstice in June is peak sunlight August is peak temperature, so summer being mid June to mid September with august being the hottest time of year makes sense.

Some people live in a cabin and all they see is the thermometer. Some others live outside and they see nature

Meteorological seasons make a bit more sense, and IME those are more commonly used anyway:

https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news/meteorological-versus-astrono...

The ancient Hawaiians had two main seasons - winter and summer, marked by the rising of Pleiades in the East during the winter and the setting of the Pleiades in the West summer, which corresponds roughly to November and May. And lines roughly up with what the article proposes.

What is he on about? Ah, american. Ok.

The traditional Chinese calendar already accounts for that, with Spring beginning in late February/early March. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_term.

In terms of temperature rather than length of daylight, the peak of summer depends on geography (and latitude in particular). In where I live (Hong Kong), July and August are the hottest months and so it makes sense to me that Summer begins in June.

I have my own set of seasons, which are offset 1/2 season from our standard reckoning.

1) The Darkness: November 6 to February 4 (the dates are midpoints in the current seasons)

2) The Brightening: February 4 to May 5

3) The Brightness: May 5 to August 6.

4) The Darkening: August 6 to November 6

Better title: our labels for natural phenomena don’t make sense.

The only thing with more power than curiosity and intelligence is the power of indignant ignorance.

If this had been submitted on April 1st, I might've let it slide, but this is just ridiculous. It's like saying, "I mean, it's just one big word salad of how do you define something?" It's really quite sad.

We dont make it up. The spinning rock decided