Discussion
The Seasons are Wrong
anactofgod: 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.
flohofwoe: Meteorological seasons make a bit more sense, and IME those are more commonly used anyway:https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news/meteorological-versus-astrono...
tonoto: 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...
floodle: Also curious if this is a US thing. I've never thought of summer solstice as the start of summer. For me it's the high point; the midsummer.
grebc: Better title: our labels for natural phenomena don’t make sense.
r0ckarong: What is he on about? Ah, american. Ok.
triyambakam: 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.
seydor: Some people live in a cabin and all they see is the thermometer. Some others live outside and they see nature
adammarples: I thought the article could have been interesting if it cross-referenced with temperature, sadly it was quite basic.
theodric: In Ireland, in February, the days warm up often into the double digits, galanthus are flowering, grass begins to take on its spring green, and I am to believe that this is still the depths of winter. No, rejected. Dismissing this article as "American" is misguided at best.
adammarples: No, late february is not the depths of winter, it's the very end of winter
mcdeltat: American discovers basic property of life which their culture purposely rejected in order to be quirky™((cries in erratic sydney weather))
bloak: Round here (GB) the standard, as reflected in decorative calendars and the like, seems to be:Spring: Mar, Apr, MaySummer: Jun, Jul, AugAutumn: Sep, Oct, NovWinter: Dec, Jan, FebWorks for me.
tilt_error: ”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.
gherkinnn: 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, and aboriginal Australians had systems of 5-8 seasons [1].0 - https://kirunalapland.se/en/our-eight-seasons/1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indigenous_Australian_seasons
cameldrv: Yeah there are "climatological seasons." The Earth heats up over time, as you say, so the longest day of the year is not generally the hottest day. Climatological summer is June/July/August. The Romans and many other northern hemisphere cultures marked summer as starting before the solstice. I'm not sure when we got the idea that Summer was supposed to start on the solstice.
kpmcc: Moving from the US to the UK, one of the first things I noticed was that the colloquial understanding of the seasons mapped much more cleanly onto what actually happens with the weather here. Growing up in the midwest of the US the seasons all felt off in the same way the author describes.
