h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Primroses in flower, catkins in the trees here its Spring

1st September, nominally.


currently we're on the second day of Autumn (nominally)

Why "nominally" Rod? What's your weather actually like down under at the moment?

My roses desperately need pruning but there were only two windows of OK weather over the weekend. During the first, I intended to plant my first seeds (for raising under cover) but I found my bag of seed compost was cold and waterlogged. So all I could do was prepare the trays and leave them somewhere to warm up and dry out a bit

In the second nice weather window, we went for a walk. And saw little lambs!

But, despite the Met Office saying that according to the meteorological calendar it's now Spring, it isn't. Yet.

Mol

This morning my aforementioned rosebuds suffered rain and hail and sleet and snow in the space of an hour. The rest of the day was sunny but VERY cold. Nowhere near spring, whatever the calendar and the meteorologists have to say for themselves.

Why 'Nominally', TC ? - well, I had to look it up. It doesn't seem to be a subject for discussion.

Understandable, I suppose ... though not too dissimilar in size to the British Isles, we're a bit nearer the equator and surrounded by rather more water (e.g. 1,000 miles or so to the nearest substantial land - Tasmania/Australia).
We do, of course, have summers & winters - Summers rather more so & winters somewhat less so, except in small patches - there seems to be a somewhat smoother transition (except sometimes!) - and wind. Yes, we have wind, sometimes more than sometimes.

At present? Several beautiful days as we head towards 'autumn'.
Shirtless? Yes - tee shirts, though not for me - I pretty well always wear long sleeves & a hat (susceptible to skin cancer [which I didn't know until getting here]).

http://i.chzbgr.com/maxW500/8453003264/hEB749EEE/

Spring here.

PP.

...still looks like the worst drought year in living memory on the north American west coast...

Sorry to hear that sounds tough

The traditional start in Ireland is 1 Feb but the weathermen use 1 Mar, the same as the UK. In fact it is normally somewhere in between. I normally consider Spring to start on 15 Feb but this year it is late. It was snowing today.

Astronomically, spring and autumn begin on the equinoxes, the two days of the year day and night are most nearly equal in length, the days getting longer following the winter solstice with equality with night at the vernal equinox, daylight continuing to increase to summer solstice, then decreasing, day and night again approximately equal at the time of the autumnal equinox and daylight continuing to decrease till winter solstice, the seasons reversing at the equator.

http://www.archaeoastronomy.com/2015.html

Climate, of course, varies from the astronomical mean with both latitude and altitude

I claim that the astronomers are misusing the terms spring etc. Astronomically, the equinox should be the exact centre of the season of spring. But due to the arbitrary fact that the continental thermal inertia in America causes the start of the season to be delayed by about six weeks, the astronomers have changed the definition.

They did the same thing with the phrase New moon.

Could you expand your last sentence, Gnomon? Have they altered the day (night) of the New Moon? Too much religious significance for it to have reached the diary makers?

There is a time when the moon is not visible because it is directly in line with the sun. This was called "Dark of moon" in English. Soon after this, a couple of days later, the moon appears again as a very thin crescent and this was called the "New Moon" by the English. The New Moon is important in Islam as it marks the beginning of the month, and for the month to begin, the officials in Mecca have to actually see the crescent of the new moon.

The last crescent in the cycle before the Dark of Moon was called the "Old Moon".

The astronomers have decided that "New Moon" is the time when there is no moon visible, when it is lined up with the sun, so the first new moon crescent is seen a few days after New Moon. They don't use the term Old Moon at all.

In the classical Gaelic and Druidic systems, the midpoints between the astronomical cardinal points of the year were considered more important, which is why the summer solstice is often referred to as 'midsummer'.

It's Midsummer in lots of other cultures as well, such as Scandinavian.

The current astronomical practice is like describing a hill between two valleys. We pick the exact midpoint between the bottom of the valley and the top of the hill and we call it the start of climbing the hill. We call from the top of the hill to the next midpoint "the top of the hill". We call from that midpoint to the bottom of the valley "descending into the valley", and we call from the bottom of the valley to the next midpoint "the bottom of the valley".

Of course the astronomical practice has the advantage of being very precise. We can say exactly when "astronomical spring" starts because it is defined. If we do it the other way we have the complication that the seasons are not all the same length because the earth goes around the sun in an ellipse, so Winter (when we're closest to the sun) is shorter than Summer (when we're furthest from the sun) in the Northern Hemisphere. So where do we put the beginning of Spring?

If you're going to make spring the season in which vegetables in the cruciferae (the cabbage, radish and mustard families) can be grown on ambient rainfall, spring in coastal southern California begins in what would be considered autumn in a north temperate climate, horticultire and agriculture only possible by means of irrigation during the tortid summer months.

If one is going to date from the first flowering of crocuses and nasturtiums, then its about halfway between winter solstice and vernal equinox, though thr nasturtiums germinated and grow vegetatively from about the midpoint between autumnal equinox and winter solstice.

Root vegetables acheive their maximum growth between the vernal equinox and summer solstice, though tbey're summer crops in north temperate conditions.

I remember a song of my parent's generation "Blackberry Winter". It talked about blackberries ripening in June, but it appearing like winter because of the singer having lost their love.

As a child, I thought that the reference to blackberries ripening in June was to show that this was an imaginary world, because everybody knows that blackberries ripen in the Autumn.

When the weather says, not the calender, or the stars, or the etchings or tea leaves.