The Met Office divides the year neatly into seasons, each lasting 3 months. The dates are fairly arbitrary, to aid with collating statistics and assessing weather patterns over time, but I feel that defining each season as lasting exactly 3 months makes the dates unrealistic and quite unhelpful, especially for gardeners. For example, spring officially begins on 1st March, but the weather is often quite wintry then. Summer officially begins 1st June, which seems too late, as it is only 3 weeks before the longest day, and we often have quite hot weather in the latter part of May. Winter begins 1 December but December is often quite mild, with the worst weather being in January and Febrary.
I think these dates would work better to guide people's expectations, but they would involve the seasons having varying lengths, as under:
Spring: 15 March to 14 May (2 months)
Summer: 15 May to 14 September (4 months)
Autumn: 15 September to 14 December (3 months)
Winter: 15 December to 14 March (3 months)
I realise the Met Office is unlikely to ever change its ways, but if they did adopt my system, at least people wouldn't be muttering "It's meant to be spring - but what awful weather this is" in early March, when the weather is often dire. Also, it overcomes the current situation where summer officially begins just 3 weeks before the longest day of the year.
So, what do others think?
YABU - The Met Office seasons are just arbitrary dates and no one really cares.
or
YANBU - The current dates used by the Met Office could do with updating.
PS: Yes, I have too much time on my hands... redundancy and lockdown mean spring can't come soon enough for me, but I don't believe it will arrive 1st March.
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AIBU?
Met Office Season Dates seem innaccurate and unhelpful - AIBU?
33 replies
Defenbaker · 21/01/2021 21:03
OP posts:
Am I being unreasonable?
99 votes. Final results.
POLL
You are being unreasonable
84%
You are NOT being unreasonable
16%
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