What is winter?

[Tom Zurinskas]

Summarizing the “What is winter” thread in the ADS forum.

I made note in this forum that I read for the first time that weather forecasters mostly define winter as the months of December, January and February.  This was spoken by a meteorologist of the National Weather Service, one who should know.  Thus, if winter starts December 1st, spring would start March 1st, summer, June 1st, and fall, September 1st, rather than on the solstice and equinox dates.  I think the ADS should endorse this definition change.

The idea that there are four seasons is reasonable and natural.  The association to solar events is obvious.  Yet for summer, why do we say that the longest daylight day (which one might logically think would be mid-summer) is the “beginning” of summer.  Then daylight for all days after that is decreasing.  Does it seem reasonable that the start of summer starts the days of decreasing sunshine and that the start of winter starts the days of increasing sunshine?  Not really.

Perhaps logic would hold that summer should have the solstice at mid summer and winter as well.  But the seasonal temperatures don’t bear such a good relation to that.  The seasons are a feeling, more related to temperatures than anything else.  The temperature changes give us the “feeling” of the seasons, as well as marked by flora and fauna events caused by temperature changes.

The best markers for the start of the seasons are as mentioned above.  Throughout the conus USA these markers hold.  For other places in the world, these seasons do not hold, so they should be defined differently elsewhere.  But for USA seasons, the definition should be as the weather forecasters opine:

Winter –December ,January, February
Spring – March, April, May
Summer – June, July, August
Fall – September, October, November



>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Tom Zurinskas
> Subject: Re: What is winter?
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I like the "popular" breakdown for seasons better than the solstice breakdown. It seems more reasonable according to temperatures. But I've never seen it described as such in print before. And I've never heard that "forecasters mostly define it" that way.
>
> The problem now is when they say a season, what do they mean? I'll assume solstice based.
>
> Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL7+
> see truespel.com phonetic spelling
>
>
>
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>> Sender: American Dialect Society
>> Poster: Herb Stahlke
>> Subject: Re: What is winter?
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> There are the solar seasons, that start at a solstice or equinox, and
>> there are the popularly defined seasons:
>>
>> Winter: December, January, February
>> Spring: March, April, May
>> Summer: June, July, August
>> Fall: September, October, November
>>
>> Here in Indiana, Summer starts with the Indy 500 and ends at Labor Day.
>>
>> Herb
>>
>> On Thu, Feb 18, 2010 at 8:05 PM, Tom Zurinskas wrote:
>>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>>> Sender: American Dialect Society
>>> Poster: Tom Zurinskas
>>> Subject: What is winter?
>>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>>
>>> A newspaper article today quotes a meteorologist of the National Weather Service who said that "althought winter officially runs from Dec 21 to Mar 21, forecasters mostly define it as Dec through Feb."
>>>
>>> Forecasters are changing the seasons. First I've heard about that.
>>>
>>>
>>> Tom Zurinskas, USA - CT20, TN3, NJ33, FL7+
>>> see truespel.com phonetic spelling
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