When do the seasons start and end?

In your humble opinion, of course. Show your work.

For me, Summer begins at or around 5pm on the Friday before Memorial Day. That’s when I usually head out for some mini-vacation. And during that time we try to get to the beach. And we don’t stop going until…

Fall, which begins around October 1. When the beach gives way to rocket launches and Ren Faires, that’s Fall. That colorful season lasts until…

The Friday after Thanksgiving. That’s when the decorations go up. That’s when shopping begins in real earnest. Tom Turkey is dead. Long live Santa. And Winter lasts until…

Summer. We rarely have a Spring here. If we did, I’d say it takes place from 11pm on tax day until 4:49pm, the Friday before Memorial Day.

Turn, turn, turn.

Dry season starts mid-December. The trade winds start to blow and the trees start to flower. That’s Christmas weather!

The wet season starts around May 1. The hills turn from brown to green. In the forest there’s the smell of wet earth again.

The US National Weather Service assigns whole months to seasons, e.g., June, July and August are “summer”.

That’s good enough for me.

In Australia, the generally accepted definition is three calendar months, e.g., December + January + February = summer. That seems similar to the USNWS definition given by ftg.

That doesn’t work for our part of Florida. We’re just about done with summer now, since our daytime highs are tailing off to the low 80s. Summer starts about late April. We don’t get winter every year, but usually it comes some time in January. Spring and Fall can be very short indeed, but if we’re lucky we get at least a few weeks of each.

Recently we’ve been dividing the year into two, roughly equivalent seasons: hurricane season and not hurricane season.

Summer ends on Labor Day (first Monday in September). Winter *should * not begin until after Thanksgiving, but nobody told the retailers around here; they have had Christmas stuff up since frickin’ AUGUST!!

I can’t really get “into” Christmas until after Thanksgiving.

Winter ends officially on the vernal equinox; more or less around Easter/Passover.

In terms of how the weather behaves… Autumn starts somewhere in mid-October, when you start keeping your windows closed and maybe running the heat. Winter comes with the first serious snow, always between Christmas and New Year. Spring starts when the ice melts and flowers come up, usually in April. And real summer starts usually in mid-June or early July, when you start to want air conditioning.

It’s not too far off from what the solstices and equinoxes say.

Ski season started on Saturday for me. :slight_smile: That to me is when winter starts, and it’ll keep on (Lord willing) until May. The other seasons are Mud and Tourist.

March, April, May–Spring
June,July,August–Summer
September,October,November–Autumn
December,January,February–Winter

Anything else is just too too complicated.