General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsToday is the First day of winter
Winter 2022 in Northern Hemisphere will begin on December 21 and ends on March 20, 2023
no_hypocrisy
(54,735 posts)Sunrise 7:17
Sunset 4:32
intrepidity
(8,577 posts)I live in a redwood forest and barely get any sun at all, but it going all dark around 4pm is getting old. I will savor those additional accumulation of minutes.
nightwing1240
(1,996 posts)Because now the days get longer. The more sun the better.
a kennedy
(35,796 posts)Emile
(41,903 posts)2naSalit
(101,985 posts)Here it's -0 and snowing hard so winter could be a doozy this years. If it leaves a lot of snow that melts away slowly next year, that would be ideal.
From this, and the last few storms, there isn't much accumulation at lower elevations and a lot of it blows away.
GoCubsGo
(34,856 posts)Dread Pirate Roberts
(1,989 posts)Maeve
(43,450 posts)As a folklorist/historian, I still think the solstices and equinoxes mark mid-points, not starting points.
old as dirt
(1,972 posts)Igel
(37,483 posts)Today starts astronomical winter. It's a really neat way of breaking up the year given the equinox, and something that every astronomer can agree on. So for them, it's maybe useful. Not so much if you're actually living on Earth. It provides foolish certainty for those who need it. "Look, the solstice and therefore the start of winter was is on 12/21/2022 2148 UTC." It's a precise moment for those who require it. It's silly unless you're an astronomer, and the December solstice isn't very useful at that; the March equinox is what counts. (By the way, "winter solstice" is hemispherist. It's hardly the winter solstice in the Southern hemisphere, where the Sun reaches the Tropic of Capricorn at solar noon at a specific place at 2148 UTC today.)
It was rather more useful for power-centers when the solstice could be seen as the return of a deity or vaguely predictive of winter's eventually ending. Hard to find absolutely fixed points in time and the March equinox, the instant and the location when the Sun crosses the equator as it moves from south to north, is really tricky to measure.
But most of us are more concerned with weather and climate, not where and where the Sun occurs at one of the Tropics or crosses the equator. (Heck, most people have no clue what the tropics are, or how the Sun could cross the equator.)
Meteorologists and climatologists break the seasons down into groupings of three months based on the annual temperature cycle as well as our calendar. We generally think of winter as the coldest time of the year and summer as the warmest time of the year, with spring and fall being the transition seasons, and that is what the meteorological seasons are based on. Meteorological spring in the Northern Hemisphere includes March, April, and May; meteorological summer includes June, July, and August; meteorological fall includes September, October, and November; and meteorological winter includes December, January, and February.
https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/news/meteorological-versus-astronomical-seasons
Of course, this is just the creeping jargonization of every-day language as we find more and more ways of being utterly prescriptivist in how we control yet another aspect of human behavior.
yonder
(10,283 posts)yonder
(10,283 posts)Roughly, sometime in the first week of February, May, August and November (end of summer/Samhradh and Samhain/Halloween), they describe the seasons much more usefully than the mathematical representations of planetary motions we use today.
I try to keep Cross-quarter days in mind when thinking of the seasons and Solstice/Equinox when thinking of a big ball of rock moving about a bigger ball of gas.
https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/halloween-derived-from-ancient-celtic-cross-quarter-day/
Edit: post #12 nails it
chowder66
(12,139 posts)I hate it when it's that warm. I'd prefer a cold snap.
But Texas is going big when, in this case, I wish it could go home.
I'd like a gentle frost. Instead it'll be near 70 Thursday at 3 pm, near 17 Friday morning at 3 am.
Meh. Just means I harvest all my winter greens tomorrow and cover the turnips and radishes as best I can, hoping they survive the 36-hour "not above freezing" "snap".
chowder66
(12,139 posts)Jack the Greater
(616 posts)What demented committee decided that the shortest day of the year was the beginning?