When you see the first white walker.
What is a “white walker”?
Living in south Texas, I use a loose definition of winter. I’ll say winter lasts from around the middle of December till somewhere around the middle of April. I define our winter as the season where it’s cold some of the time or just right some of the time. We do have a very nice fall in October and November, when most days are just right. We don’t really have a spring, however. Here it feels like winter turns directly into summer sometime in April, with no intervening season. One year the last day of winter was May 2nd. I remember it well because the weather was so cold it forced Jimmy Buffett to postpone a concert in Austin that day because of the winter like weather. Summer began on May 4th that year, with one day of spring on May 3rd.
I live just south of Los Angeles, no true winter. Has never snowed here. 94 degrees today. I live on the coast which is usually pretty mild both winter and summer. Summer temps are normally low 80’s and winter temps are usually mid 60’s to low 70’s.
I wonder if this is typical for most temperate areas. In Texas it’s hard to pin down a spring season. If I had to, I would say that spring is when some days are too hot and some days are too cold, but it’s never just right. Fall, however, doesn’t really have the same pattern as spring. In fall most of the days are just right. Sorry for the hijack, but I think defining fall and spring helps to identify winter.
In Austin, you just never know. It CAN be in the Eighties on Christmas, but it could be frigid too.
We haven’t had snow that stuck more than a few hours in 26 years, but we get a few icy days each year.
Well its 97 degrees three miles from the Pacific Ocean in the middle of october. Where are you winter?? Its too freakin hot to drink.
DOH!
For my own mental well-being, I try to delay it as long as possible. I don’t consider it Winter until I have to snow-blow for the first time. Winter is over the day I put the snow-blower into the shed. This is usually around Mid-December to the end of March. Pretty close to the actual calendar Winter.
This,this, this. Screw the solstices and equinoxes. Astronomical alignments have fuck all to do with anything.
We’re approaching the same problem from opposite ends. I say the calendar dictates seasons, because it does. You say the weather dictates seasons, which is a reasonable argument, especially since (for instance) in Australia, they don’t call the season between December and March winter, they call it summer.
My argument is that when the average high temperature in my city of Rochester, NY is 78° for the month of September (which it was this year) how can you call it fall? Granted, the majority of the month is officially summer, but still. The average high temperature in May was 75° and that is decisively, officially still spring. Average high in November was 45° last year (which sounds about right) but average high in March was 36°. The outliers in those averages are even more remarkable.
Whether you agree or not, can you at least understand my logic?
When the snow start flying ! Some place already got a little snow in my state .
Here’s the official word: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/news/meteorological-versus-astronomical-seasons
I go with the US National Weather Service’s definition of seasons- whole months. So winter is Dec.-Feb.
Works for me. Our winters are “episodic”. A bit here and there with no reliable calendar date for first or last episode.
It’s winter when I have to put on a coat, muffler, and woolly hat.
A fast ice zombie with a nasty attitude.
What is this “winter”? 
That’s the season you have more Russians than normal running all over the place. 
Damned Commies.