Seasons are pretty obvious in temperate climates. For example, summer and winter can be quite different from each other. However, it turns out that when, precisely, people say seasons arrive can also be quite different, too. Sort of.
I’ve often talked about how seasons in this part of the world are said to begin on the guest of the relevant month, and not on a solstice or equinox. Some people who use the traditional dates (solstice or equinox) become kind of angry at those of us who don’t.
I think the crux is what’s being measured. Traditionalists use the position of the sun relative to the equator, much as our ancestors did in ancient times. The problem is that weather doesn’t neatly correspond to where the sun is. This is why some people prefer the first of the relevant month because it’s more closely identified with seasonal changes on weather. For example, this year we started having chilly autumn temperatures in late May, and some parts of the Northern Hemisphere were having quite warm temperatures around the same time, and all of that didn’t wait for the June Solstice some three weeks later.
Most people would acknowledge that this is a really unimportant disagreement. However, I do wish we could agree to refer to the solstices and equinoxes by month, not by the season. The seasons in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres are complete opposites, so whenever people use the season to describe solstices and equinoxes, we have to stop to work out where the speaker actually is in order to know month they’re talking about. That’s not ideal.
In that spirt, the June Solstice arrived in New Zealand at 8.50am this morning. The temperature at my house at that moment was around 6C (42.8F), because winter arrived three weeks ago. For us, seasons and astronomical events definitely aren’t the same. But, you already knew all that. Of course.
Related: Today is the shortest day, but tonight won’t be the coldest night – Stuff
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