The Sun has climbed across the equator into the northern hemisphere of the sky, as shown in this laborious pieceing together of the two halves of the Sun chart in Astronomical Calendar 2026
So we’re a day into – early spring. Or is it middle spring? Or early autumn? …
Yesterday Alastair McBeath, my friend the meteor expert, told me about a question from someone who had been told that the provider of some product “hoped to begin shipping probably in the late spring” and was uncertain what that meant.
Very understandably uncertain: it could have a wide range of meanings depending on where you live and what your usual assumptions are. And, with the addition of “hope” and “begin” and “probably,” it is an exemplary piece of CYA.
I thought about it and realized that “spring” has these definitions:
– Calendar-month based: Feb Mar Apr, or Nar-Apr-May, according to preference.
– Calendar-quarter based: Apr May Jun
delimited: Mar equinox to Jun solstice.
– Equinox-and-solstice centered: quarter of the year centered on the Mar equinox.
– Regional climate based: from the average date when the country’s average temperature is passed in the upward direction to the average date when it is passed downward.
Local weather based: from the date when people feel it has become more like summer than winter to the date when they would say the opposite.
All the above to be reversed for the southern hemisphere! So maybe that makes at least 12 definitions.
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This weblog maintains its right to be about astronomy or anything under the sun.
I take the cross-quarter for my personal sense of the seasons here in Vermont. Solstice is mid-summer/winter and Equinox is mid-spring/autumn. The snow-fleas (springtails) appear as February opens – covering and be-speckling the bright snow like sooty fly-ash – – billions of them. My neighbors tough it through January – but also get a “spring” in their step during February as they tentatively emerge – so I think my seasonal feel is largely shared in this locale. May Day opens the summer season, August marks the mood of Past-Prime, and the withdrawal of verdant moistures. Finally Brilliant October to Bleak November begins the contraction to winter.
Snow-fleas – springtails – gorgeous enrichment of the lore of spring!
I base it on the weather.
I consider spring to be 9 weeks long. March 1st average high is 40. April 16th average high is 60.
Then we have 17 weeks of balmy weather.
Then 9 weeks of fall. October 6th average high is 60. December 12th average high is 40
Then we have 17 weeks of winter, my favorite season. Sparkling snow with its billions of glitter impress me more than the stars in a dark sky.
The above averages are for Ohio. But we’re in the middle. Mean temperature for the year its 50 in Ohio. Mean temperature for the whole world is also 50 degrees.