The Seasons Are Wrong • Hacker News Board

Re: The Seasons Are Wrong

#51

Post by gmuslera » Sat, Apr 11, 2026, 11:51 AM UTC

A lot of time cycles are rooted on what happens in the sky, not on land, because what happens on land seems to vary all the time, but what happen in the sky seem to be fixed and immutable. The day comes from the Earth rotation. the week and the month originally comes from Moon orbit and phases, the year and seasons from Earth's orbit and tilt.

The seasons in particular happens essentially in the same day in the same way across multiple years. You can put a mark, build a set of monoliths or whatever and see when you are back in that day again, regardless if it is a rainy, cold, hot or windy day. Weather is very variable, and may happen differently in different regions, but you can trust in the skies. And have a clear prediction for that was essential for any civilization based on crops and agriculture, or hunters/gatherers to know when trees will start to bear fruits and some animals come out from hibernation.

Re: The Seasons Are Wrong

#52

Post by idlus » Sat, Apr 11, 2026, 11:58 AM UTC

keiferski wrote: post #39

oidar wrote: post #20

“One sort of optional thing you might do is realize that there are six seasons instead of four. The poetry of four seasons is all wrong for this part of the planet, and this may explain why we are depressed so much of the time. I mean, spring doesn’t feel like spring a lot of the time, and November is all wrong for autumn, and so on. Here is the truth about the seasons: Spring is May and June. What could be springier…

It’s a shame that the months in English don’t really have descriptive names like in other languages. Polish (and other Slavic languages) for example, has some interesting ones: - February (Luty) comes from “bleak, harsh, bitter” - April (Kwiecień) is “month of flowers” - August (Sierpień) is “month of the sickle,” as in the harvest time - November (Listopad) is “month of leaves falling”

The French Republican calendar used a few years after the revolution was also in this spirit. However these names do not export well across the world, notably a problem when as a colonial power like France you export your language and customs.

Re: The Seasons Are Wrong

#53

Post by VladStanimir » Sat, Apr 11, 2026, 12:23 PM UTC

This article does not take into consideration seasonal lag, where temperature trails behind sunlight by 4 to 8 weeks. So while the solstice in June is peak sunlight August is peak temperature, so summer being mid June to mid September with august being the hottest time of year makes sense.

Re: The Seasons Are Wrong

#54

Post by wookmaster » Sat, Apr 11, 2026, 12:38 PM UTC

anactofgod wrote: post #12

Do you want to define the seasons by temperature? Or by lengthening of the day? Because, to me, seasons are tied to weather in general, but temperature specifically. And temperature seems to correlates to length of day, but trails it by about a month. Which makes sense, since it takes time to heat/cool the enormous thermal mass. So, if weather is how you track the changing of the seasons, it’s close enough to correct…

There are meteorological seasons already defined by weather shifts.

Re: The Seasons Are Wrong

#55

Post by pandaman » Sat, Apr 11, 2026, 12:48 PM UTC

tonoto wrote: post #6

Start of summer.. June 21st? Is this statement true for US? Another thing to put in mind, besides Fahrenheit, yards, lbs.. at least time (besides 12 hour clock) seem to conform with the rest of the world...

Yes, in the US seasons are aligned with equinoxes and solstices. I.e. summer starts at the Summer Solstice and ends at the Autumnal Equinox.

Re: The Seasons Are Wrong

#56

Post by mplanchard » Sat, Apr 11, 2026, 1:12 PM UTC

oidar wrote: post #20

“One sort of optional thing you might do is realize that there are six seasons instead of four. The poetry of four seasons is all wrong for this part of the planet, and this may explain why we are depressed so much of the time. I mean, spring doesn’t feel like spring a lot of the time, and November is all wrong for autumn, and so on. Here is the truth about the seasons: Spring is May and June. What could be springier…

Here (Vermont) we call Locking Stick Season and Unlocking Mud Season, but agree that six is the right number

Re: The Seasons Are Wrong

#57

Post by Balgair » Sat, Apr 11, 2026, 2:15 PM UTC

Seems like the seasons are a local thing.

Now, this also seems like a calculable problem. Other posters mention seasonal lag and other effects.

Guys, we have computers, we can compute this, it should be straightforward?

Grab a few data sets like rainfall, temp, solar, etc, get a map from like Google Earth or whatever, combine them and have it spit out the seasons, right?

Now, I'm not a tropical person (as in I don't live in between the tropic lines on the map), so I've no idea what the seasons are like there (summer, just always summer?), or what it is like in the Sahara or in Sweden, so I don't know if you'd then need to just come up with entirely new seasons. That would be a very local thing to name, I'd imagine. But I think that you'd be able to mostly just compute all this, right?

Re: The Seasons Are Wrong

#58

Post by roryirvine » Sat, Apr 11, 2026, 2:27 PM UTC

tilt_error wrote: post #28

”Winter was short, this year”. “Spring came early”. It does not make sense to tie these concepts to a calendar. Summer is when you dare to dip your toes in the ocean. In winter we have a meter of ice. I generally place vacation weeks in July and august, because the weather is nice and other people are on vacation as well. The statement that the seasons are wrong, does not make sense. To tie these names to a calendar,…

Yeah, I was expecting this to be an article about climate change which really is causing the seasons to become "wrong".

As a trivial example, a couple of weeks ago a local newspaper reprinted its usual "What's on in London in April?" article, and one of the items was "the first half of April is peak cherry blossom season".

Er, not any more it isn't! Most fruit trees were already in leaf by the time the paper went to press, with only a few prunes remaining with significant amounts of blossom. And we'll see a similar article in May talking about bluebells, despite them actually being at their peak right now. So that's a shift of 2-3 weeks over the course of the two decades that that particular publication has existed.

And it might not matter so much if the seasons were changing equally for all species - but some instead rely on day length, yet others on the amount of sunlight (which has been low so far this year). So pollinators are arriving only at the end of pollen season, predatory insects are finding their prey diminished by starvation, rodents haven't hibernated, and entire ecosystems are becoming weirdly distorted.

Re: The Seasons Are Wrong

#59

Post by theodric » Sat, Apr 11, 2026, 5:16 PM UTC

danaris wrote: post #50

adammarples wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, late february is not the depths of winter, it's the very end of winter

Right—in Ireland (to which I have just moved). In Upstate New York (from which I have just moved), February is the depths of winter. The temperature there can plunge to -10°F (for the highs ) for a week straight. It's not until early April that you're really guaranteed to see things thawing for good. (March can be a crapshoot; sometimes it's looking like spring, with warm breezes and birds returning, and other times…

Welcome to Ireland

Re: The Seasons Are Wrong

#60

Post by Markoff » Sat, Apr 11, 2026, 5:20 PM UTC

keiferski wrote: post #39

oidar wrote: post #20

“One sort of optional thing you might do is realize that there are six seasons instead of four. The poetry of four seasons is all wrong for this part of the planet, and this may explain why we are depressed so much of the time. I mean, spring doesn’t feel like spring a lot of the time, and November is all wrong for autumn, and so on. Here is the truth about the seasons: Spring is May and June. What could be springier…

It’s a shame that the months in English don’t really have descriptive names like in other languages. Polish (and other Slavic languages) for example, has some interesting ones: - February (Luty) comes from “bleak, harsh, bitter” - April (Kwiecień) is “month of flowers” - August (Sierpień) is “month of the sickle,” as in the harvest time - November (Listopad) is “month of leaves falling”

The non descriptive names are better because they can be consistent across different countries not depending climate

July in Croatian - Srpanj August in Czech/Polish - Srpen/Sierpen

because for obvious reasons harvest time in Croatia is one month earlier than in Czechia

though your example for April in Polish makes no sense

April in Polish - Kwiecien May in Czech - Kveten

I'm pretty sure flowers are blooming (it's not about flowers, but about blooming) in Czechia earlier than in Poland, so the names should be reversed

though even English/German/Slovak months are not without their issues, October should be eight, November ninth, December tenth based on their Latin names, this video makes fun about it, but honestly I seriously like the proposed system:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=vunESk53r5U