[Sca-cooks] Summer starts WHEN?

[GreyGoose]

<some modest snippage>

> > melcnewt at netins.net writes:
> > > Always has been that way as far as weathermen are concerned. December 1
> > >  starts winter, March 1 Spring, June 1 summer, and September 1 Autumn.
> >
> > The weather folks in VA and FL don't agree with you I'm afraid... They say
> > that the seasons start with the solstices/equinoxes. A friend at University
> > of Arizona who studied atmospheric sciences laughed when I asked him about
> > the idea that the seasons start on anything other than those dates...
<also crawling out of lurkage>

As a professional meteorologist - 27 years with the National Weather
Service, 22 of them with various incarnations of the Climate Prediction
Center - I can state categorically that the 'meteorological' starts of the
seasons are indeed Dec.1, March 1, June 1 and Sept. 1.  This has much more
to do with calculating statistics that with when one particular spot on
this globe sees a noticable change in general conditions. This allows for
consistency of period (the solstice does not occur on the same day every
year) and statistically valid calculations.  It also makes pulling monthly
data together into seasons *much* easier.

If anyone has any additional questions, I will be glad to help them.

Joanna Dionne
(Janina Krakowska knows nothing about all of this, but since she *is* in a
major university center, knows that meteorology is the study of things
that come from the sky)