Met Office Season Dates seem innaccurate and unhelpful - AIBU?

[Defenbaker]

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.

Saw these on my walk today and thought of this thread.

If we have to change the name sof seasons, then winter should be named "pre-Spring"
It was sleeting in the morning, then this afternoon I saw these. They are bluebells! I saw small buds on the trees too, and the birds seemed chattier. It will sleet and snow again before Spring is fully here and we have a couple of cold months to come.
But the promise of Spring is here already.
🌷🌱🐣

What I would most like to change is that weather forecasts are read by genuine meteorologists and that if the forecast is recorded earlier, then we are advised so we know it is not 100% up to date. Not someone chosen because they have larger breasts than average.

The Met Office dates seem perfectly sensible to me and easy to remember.

You need to get out more.
Honestly, have a long walk followed by a bottle of wine

Why not count how many bits of past in a 500g bag or even better grains of rice?

@WTAFIhavelosttheferret Actually I walk several miles a day... but I'm so BORED since being made redundant! Hence pondering on random stuff and starting daft threads.

@SquishySquirmy "Pre Spring"... I like it! Back on the subject of seasons, I've heard that in some countries further south, they have 8 seasons! Also, some tropical countries near the equator don't really have seasons at all, except for the rainy/monsoon season, with the rest of the year just being permanently sunny. That must be weird... tropical heat or pouring rain. So, things could be worse.

@SparklyLeprechaun

I'm in Scotland. Summer is 3 days in early June.

Nah it’s usually a Tuesday!

You want to be searching for the last frost date for your area

@CountRostoff

In Ireland we were all taught by the Celtic Calendar- Spring is Feb/March/Apr, Summer May/June/July, Autumn Aug/Sept/Oct and Winter Nov/Dec/Jan. Makes no sense! Nothing spring like about February in Ireland!

I was going to post exactly this.

February isn't in the least bit spring like here. I've been living in Ireland for 20 years and I've never been able to get my head around it.

And to me, August is still summer.