please empty your brain below
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I have my own system when it comes to reckoning the start of autumn:
Can I see where I'm going without lights when on my 5.30am bike ride?
Are there huge black spiders running across my lounge carpet of an evening?
Does it smell like autumn when I go outside?
Is there a hazey mellow quality to the light on fine days?
Do I have to spend time pointlessly tidying fallen leaves and other detritus from my garden area at the bidding of Senior Management (my wife)?
Old-school dead-reckoning perhaps, but it works for me.
Burntweenie | 21.09.19 - 7:39 a.m. | #
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Schools go back at the start of September. That big change in the family routine probably also has a big mental influence on the perception of the seasonal change.
Jon Jones | 21.09.19 - 8:11 a.m. | #
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Schools spoil the concept of seasons by having three terms instead of four.
I wonder how "horizon" is officially determined. It'll vary depending on whether you are beside a mountain, or on the summit, or on the coast.
kev | 21.09.19 - 8:45 a.m. | #
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I'm siding with the meteorologists because I'm the sort of person who likes things being neat and orderly, seasons included.
X-Plaistow | 21.09.19 - 9:11 a.m. | #
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And since we seem to each have a free choice about when Autumn begins, I think I will go for the concept of a fuzzy concept. Is it autumn yet? Probably, but not definitely.
Malcolm | 21.09.19 - 9:42 a.m. | #
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I'm with Burntweenie. The calendar marks the point when my thoughts turn to the new season, but I look for the changes.
The swifts in my area had left by the end of July, some leaves began to yellow and holly berries began to ripen a month later. I have already picked my first fallen conkers off of the ground.
The leaves are definitely looking "tired" now - pre-turning and still mostly green, but have lost their vibrancy, and when this lovely weather changes in the next day or so, it shall finally feel right to say goodbye to summer and hello to autumn.
Cornish Cockney | 21.09.19 - 10:10 a.m. | #
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Autumn unofficially starts as soon as retailers say it does...by 1) having "Summer" items on sale 2) "new season" items promoted and 3) the odd Christmas item appearing on shelves. In which case 1st September is the start of Autumn.
Grumpy Anon | 21.09.19 - 10:32 a.m. | #
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It's autumn when the tree outside says it is.
Still Anon | 21.09.19 - 10:46 a.m. | #
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Well, the mid-autumn festival was a week ago. I also object to summer and winter beginning at midsummer and midwinter respectively, so I find the meteorologists’ option a good compromise.
Alan | 21.09.19 - 11:11 a.m. | #
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I'm with the meteorologists.
However, here in Ireland, we have another problem inflicted on us by a mixture of folklore and the church. St Bridget's day falls on 1 February, and on that day in most primary schools (those which are still under the management of the Catholic church) children traditionally make corn crosses and are told that the day marks the "first day of spring". I protested against this when my own children were that age saying if that were the case it would lead to the autumn starting on 1 August, which is patently ridiculous.
Met Éireann, the official government meteorological service, disagrees with the church on this and so every year its TV weather forecasters have to tell the nation that spring "officially" starts on 1 March.
Charles | Homepage | 21.09.19 - 11:58 a.m. | #
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It often feels to me like autumn does start in August.
Sarah | 21.09.19 - 2:03 p.m. | #
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With all this focus on "is it autumn yet?" we are missing the erudite stuff about exactly when the equinox falls. DG has explained it all very clearly, but I'm still amazed at the concept of an instantaneous equinox, which can happen at any time of day, but happens at different places at different times - both different clock times but also at different sundial times.
Malcolm | 21.09.19 - 2:46 p.m. | #
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If autumn is the season in which the birds start going south it can be as early as June for some, most notably cuckoos which don’t have parental duties and some waders in which only one sex (not always the male) has parental duties
Robert Butlin | 21.09.19 - 6:24 p.m. | #
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Autumn now starts when ‘Strictly’ bloomin comes on the TV. Oh, which is today.
Geofftech | 21.09.19 - 9:12 p.m. | #
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Like Alan I have difficulty with the first day of summer being midsummer's day (although in some years summer does seem to be that short!) As the seasons are an artificial division of a cyclical pattern, there is no reason why they have to be the same length, nor indeed why there have to be four of them.
timbo | 21.09.19 - 10:14 p.m. | #
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I think a lot of these problems arise because we think the seasons all need to be the same length. I'd be quite happy to see autumn as beginning at the equinox and lasting, say, six weeks.
Andrew M | 21.09.19 - 11:26 p.m. | #
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But more seriously: as I understand it there were historically two systems, the astronomical seasons, marked by the quarter days, and the agricultural seasons, marked by the cross-quarter days.
The quarter days, Christmas, Lady Day, Midsummer and Michaelmas, are rough approximations to the solstices and equinoxes. The cross-quarter days, All Saints/Hallowe'n, Candlemas/St Bridget, May Day and Lammas, mark the shifts in agricultural activity. On that basis August is indeed in autumn, because it falls within the period of harvest (Lammas Day, first of August, being the day when a loaf made from the firstfruits of harvest is brought to church).
Our modern conception of the seasons is an uneasy fusion of these two, which explains how midsummer and the first day of summer fall about the same time.
Andrew M | 21.09.19 - 11:36 p.m. | #
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The quarter days are about four days after the equinoxes and solstices because the dates of Christian festivals became standardised on the astronomical events in about the 4th Century AD, by which time they had already drifted about three days from when the Julian calendar was devised. By the 16th century they had drifted by another week, and the Gregorian correction then re-synchronised the calendar with the astronomical seasons in the Julian calendar. However, the Christian festivals retained their traditional dates, and are thus perpetually about four days after the astronomical dates.
Whether by accident or design, the unequal lengths of the months, and therefore the meteorological seasons do actually coincide quite closely with the differing lengths of the astronomical ones. Thus "meteorological" summer is 92 days and "meteorological" winter is only 90 (91 in a leap year). The seasons based on cross-quarter days are a less good match, as the longest is winter (1 November to 2 February) at 93 days
timbo | 23.09.19 - 10:26 a.m. | #
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