Why do you suppose fall seems to be getting shorter?
Are you kidding me? It’s rained or been cloudy the past 21 out of 24 days. That horrible burning ball of gas has been all but banished. Oh, sure, it’s crept up to 95 a time or two, but I can open the door and not have my lungs seared. I had my WINDOWS open two weekends ago. If that ain’t fall, I don’t know what is. I’ll grant you that live oak, Texas oak, and post oak are not the trees of movies or greeting cards, but it’s not summer. I can breathe. I’m considering close toed shoes again. I cooked something in the oven.
(Mind you, you can get away with sandals all year for the most part. There’s just something about a pair of flip flops in November that screams no even if it is 75 degrees outside.)
Autumn in the Pacific Northwest is awesome, don’t listen to that other guy. After Labor Day all the damned tourists go home so you can road trip without being stuck behind an endless line of lumbering RVs and the campgrounds magically open up everywhere. We get some rain, but after the long dry spell of summer it’s very welcome since it puts the wildfires out and cleans the air into its normal sparkling blue. It gets chilly enough at night that the comforter feels really good but not cold enough that getting out of bed is torture. It stays light late enough to be able to get out and do something fun after work. The trees turn lovely shades of yellow and orange and red, tossing in the breezes against that blazing blue sky. There’s dew on the spiderwebs every morning but not yet frost on the windshield. Temps range from the mid '50s at night to the high 70s-low 80s during the day. When things are perfect it goes on like this until just before Hallowe’en, when it starts raining so the kids can’t go trick or treat. That part’s a bummer but it’s a very pretty time of year. Oh, and over on the coast it’s usually perfect weather with no big storms expected. It rocks!
This Onion article kind of sums up fall:
Wonderful.
Everything feels like it is slowing down. The leaves change color. The weather is nice enough that you aren’t too cold or too hot. There are holidays back to back coming up (Halloween, then Thanksgiving, then Christmas).
Football season starts. I don’t follow football but other people like it.
On the negative side it can be cold and wet. Those leaves aren’t as nice when they get all wet and stick to everything.
But it’s still my favorite season by far. Too bad winter comes next.
Places near the equator have a wet and dry season. Places further north or south of the equator, but not too far north or south have four seasons (depending on how far north or south determines if they have mild Winters and harsh summers or mild summers and harsh Winters)
The poles probably just have winter year round.
And the seasons in the southern hemisphere are the opposite of the northern. They have winter when we have summer and spring when we have fall.
That’s my impression.
**What’s fall like? **
Fall is like death.
The death of your friend Summer. The one you had so much fun with, the camp outs, the warm endless days when everything lay before you and anything was possible. But now you realize it is not, no longer possible. Summer can no longer come out and play, it has stage 4 cancer. The retirement of September while watching your old friends die. The senility of October as you lose your very mind, your identity. And the blessed hospice of November where it doesn’t matter anymore anyway.
Spring is impossibly far away. So far away it is out of reach for you.
Fall is death, cold, long, slow, and cerain. And oh so sad.
Oh! 
It sounds so sad. :dubious: But even in Texas you do have trees, at least some of might shed leaves in autumn|?
Exactly! And that’s why I love it so! (Cue the late Brahms chamber music)
Yes, autumn is fine and good. Sometimes September windy and rainy, but then a bright clear October. I do think it would be odd not to have seasons.
New England has four distinct seasons, but the seasons are not all the same length. Like spring, fall is one of the shorter ones. As fall begins, it’s indistinguishable from summer for the first couple of weeks most years. Then, all at once it seems, it’s suddenly cooler and less humid, in an entirely pleasant way and the leaves change colors in a really pretty way. Unfortunately this doesn’t last, and usually by late November it begins to snow in a stick to the ground sort of way, and it won’t stop until sometime in March or April.
If fall wasn’t cut off at both ends, I’d probably like it more. As it is, it’s a good third shorter than winter or summer. And it also suffers from being followed by winter, which I dread, and that makes it harder to enjoy. It’s too bad because fall contains Halloween which is awesome, and Thanksgiving which most people seem to enjoy, but…fall’s definitely too short.
Have you considered moving to Seattle?
Early fall looks like this in my neck of the woods:
https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1914/44895095102_0b37845cfe_o_d.jpg
I concur. Our last couple of years in Escondido, I think we ended up with about thirty or forty percent of the “normal” annual precipitation.
Why do I feel like I’m in a roller coaster that’s juu-u-ussst about at the top of the first big incline?
Still, I’m mostly looking forward to the rain. You can be annoyed by just about anything if you get too much of it; well, I’ve already been annoyed enough by droughts and near-drought conditions.
I read somewhere recently that the Willamette Valley is undergoing “severe” or “extreme” drought. Seriously, people up here don’t know what drought is.
Of course you also can, and in fact do, get stuck behind lumbering drivers who happen to be other Oregonians.
Exactly except winter in New England lasts about 147 months most years in my estimation and is miserable. Spring varies from year to year but lasts about 7 minutes.
For me, fall is the month where I have to be careful walking out to my car in the morning, because big ol’ garden spiders have started spinning their giant freakin’ webs everywhere. Usually across the front porch, or from tree to front porch, or tree to car. And if there’s one thing I’m an expert at, it’s unexpectedly walking into a spider web.
Everything said about Fall in California is true. In the Central Valley, Fall is basically “second summer” until early November. Then we get like three weeks of Fall. After that it’s basically grey outside until Spring.
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They are not in RVs and are therefore easy to pass.
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They are probably not going out to the boonies road tripping so you mostly have to deal with them around towns. Again, easy to pass and/or avoid.
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When they get there, they mostly obey the burn bans. Unlike most tourists.
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Sometimes, if you’re following someone who knows where they’re going you can follow them to some incredible spots known only to a few. This is a worthy reason to slow your roll once in a while.
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What’s your hurry? It’s gorgeous out and the scenery is amazing. Enjoy it, why don’t you?