Winter Solstsice

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, "potioncat" <willsonkmom at ...>
wrote:
>
> I will add, that in many places, no matter what the calendar may say, 
> by Christmas, and certainly by Jan it's already been winter for a 
> long time!
>

I figured that Carol in Arizona and I in Southern California are not
well suited to decide based on weather when mysterious seasons like
Winter and Summer begin. Even the familiar seasons like Rain and Fire
are acting crazy lately - Fire Season is supposed to run July through
October, not all year long!

But if a person living in a more conventional climate wanted to
proclaim that Autumn begins with the first frost, Autumn would begin
at different times in different places, which is not useful for
calendars that will be distributed all over a continent.

I don't know how to define the weather of the beginning of other
seasons. First Flower could be Spring, except that my New York memory
is that fairly often there's a warm spell in February, and the redbud
trees put out their red buds, and then there's another cold snap that
kills all the buds... and in April, when the sun has definitely come
out and melted the snow, and the grass has grown back, with flowers,
there's always a surprise blizzard in April.