}

Friday, June 01, 2018

Welcome to Winter 2018

Today is the First Day of Winter in this part of the world, though the colder weather started several days ago. At 9am this morning, it was 5 degrees in our area (that’s 41F). By Auckland standards, that’s a pretty typical winter morning temperature.

When I first checked out Facebook this morning, I was greeted by a video from Facebook (screen grab of the first screen up above). Such things are nice enough, but even more significant when you consider that the country that Facebook is headquartered in—the USA—uses the relevant solstices and equinoxes for the start of the seasons, and we use the first of that month. Points to them for having culturally aware promotions/ads for themselves.

In truth, the official start of a season is kind of irrelevant. We’d been sliding into winter already, as I said, and that often happens with other seasons, too. So, if we’re going to pick an arbitrary date to use to mark the start of a season, why not use the first of the relevant month? We do.

And it's definitely winter now—my least favourite season. At least I only have three months of the season. Sigh.

For those who simply cannot accept anything else, this year the June Solstice will arrive in New Zealand on Thursday, June 21 at 10:07pm NZST.

2 comments:

Arthur Schenck (AmeriNZ) said...

That IS weird. I mean, sure, I get something like that from time to time, you up there? Weird.

rogerogreen said...

Someone walking by me today wished me a happy summer. I've never heard that before in my life, to my recollection.