
Meteorological winter aligns with December-January-February - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/blog/dont-believe-the-hype-winter-does-not-begin-tonight
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xenophonf
I can't believe that I was an adult when I first learned that seasons are not
universal, and I don't mean that July is winter in Australia but summer in
Europe. I mean like how in Mali, there are three seasons: the wet (rainy)
season from June to mid-December, the dry season from mid-December to March,
and a hot season from March to June. The epiphany I experienced was kind of
like the one I had during a software engineering class, an exercise in
internationalization where students had to write a program that took people's
names as an input (which turns out to be quite complicated). It always amazes
me how many unexamined assumptions our minds make about how the world works,
and it always surprises me when I run into one.

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pjungwir
I'm 38 but only noticed a few years ago that calendars say "Winter begins". I
feel like as a kid it was "Winter solstice." I always assumed the solstice was
the _midpoint_ of winter, not the beginning. Doesn't that make more sense?
Anyway, my sense of the seasons is more like children's books: autumn is when
the leaves change, winter is when it snows, spring is when the flowers bud,
summer is hot. Sounds like meteorological winter still doesn't put the
solstice at the middle of winter, but it would be closer.

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untothebreach
Yea, I've been thinking about that too. A few weeks ago my 3 year old saw it
snowing out and said, "Mom and Dad, it's winter!" A visitor we had over said
something to the effect of, "well, actually it's not winter YET, that's not
till later in the month." The 3 year old was very confused, as he could
clearly see it was winter by the snow outside. I much prefer the 3 year old's
simple method for knowing when winter was here.

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jonathonf
It always saddens me when I hear of adults closing off conversations with
children (and in this case in such a dismissive manner). Adults really should
realise that they are constantly teaching children, or rather, children are
constantly learning from them. What did this exchange teach?

A better approach is to keep things open - for example, respond with something
along the lines of "how do you know?" (or even just "why?"). The you get to
talk about seasons and how they relate to temperature and weather, leaves on
the trees, snowmen...

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Swizec
So? I remember watching weather reporters as a kid, and even teachers telling
us about seasons in primary school, they always had a clear differentiation
between "meteorological seasons" and "calendar seasons". Meteorological winter
started on December 1st, and ended with the first blooming flowers in early
March. November is a bit more confusing, because you traditionally start
wearing a winter coat on November 1st, but only in the morning as days are
still warm-ish.

I assume different countries will have different meteorological seasons. Just
like most countries within a timezone don't exactly sync up with the idea that
the sun is at the highest point at noon.

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jjp
Interesting that the Met Office in the UK says that winter for weather starts
on December 31st [http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/learning/learn-about-the-
weather...](http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/learning/learn-about-the-weather/how-
weather-works/seasons/winter/when-does-winter-start)

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ComputerGuru
Previous discussion from earlier today:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10777310](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10777310)

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thrownaway2424
Instead of this somewhat pointless magazine article, the phenomenon of
astronomical winter and meteorological winter being out of phase can be used
to teach numerous important concepts to children (and, apparently, to magazine
contributors). Seasons can teach periodicity, phase relationship, the
relationship between an input (solar flux) and a system that integrates that
input (atmospheric temperature), leading to the calculus of trigonometric
functions, or leading to principles of accounting. Really this one simple
natural cycle can be the basis of an entire semester of high school science or
math. Whining about the calendar is pretty superficial.

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tlammens
Let's just move the 1st of January to the day the 'real' winter begins.
Time... what an invention!

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imjk
It's ironic this article was written in record-breakingly warm December (in
the Eastern United States).

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nickbauman
In Minnesota, Winter is November to May.

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taylorwc
Best argument possible in favor of not living that far north!

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epimetheus
There's not a 100% correlation with low temps and being far north. The Seattle
area is as far north as most of Minnesota, and our winters are nothing like
theirs (record low here is 0F - Seatac 1950) and it's typically overcast and
45F.

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nickbauman
Yes, absolutely! We're mid-continent, and the Laurentian Divide pulls Arctic
air downward over our state making it the coldest in the lower 48. Still I'll
take our far greater cold sunny days to Seattle's warmer overcast days every
single time, thank you.

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nqzero
tl;dr - "i don't like that words have meanings, i'm more interested in
feelings"

