4 ms·
kind of off-topic: Being raised in Brazil, on a urban environment there are basically two seasons: Summer and Winter, the rest is just transition between them.
by soneca 7y ago
kind of off-topic:
Being raised in Brazil, on a urban environment there are basically two seasons: Summer and Winter, the rest is just transition between them.
Now, having just moved to the USA I am constantly incredibly confused by season references. Not only because the seasons are inverted, but because we do not use season references for anything in Brazil. We say the months name or things like "end/middle/start of the year" or "first/second semester"
So when I see that a movie will come to the theaters "next fall" I have no idea when it is.
- foobar1962 7y agoIn Australia, the two seasons are “football” and “cricket”.
- flukus 7y agoBut now we have the cricket world cup in the middle of footy season and soccer football in the middle of cricket season. I blame climate Change /s. More seriously, the CSIRO has attempted to define Australia's seasons better (in line with plants) with the addition of Sprinter on Sprummer: http://www.publish.csiro.au/book/7221 http://www.publish.csiro.au/book/7221 . The BOM has a page on various indigenous seasons too: http://www.bom.gov.au/iwk/index.shtml http://www.bom.gov.au/iwk/index.shtml . I'm enjoying an unseasonably warm Chunnup day today.
- ehnto 7y agoWe could have called them anything, and they chose sprinter and sprummer?
- mjlee 7y agoThis is Australia we're talking about. Seven Mile Beach, Great Barrier Reef, Great Sandy Desert, Granite Island... Calling things exactly what they are seems like a tradition.
- foobar1962 7y agoOn the Central Coast of NSW (an hour or so north of Sydney) there is a salt water lake, and a town has grown near the lake's entrance to the sea. It's called The Entrance. Parts of the lake are shallow and muddy, and a long jetty (pier) has been built. That town is Long Jetty. Shelly Beach is close by too.
- taneq 7y agoYou missed the small but important season of "Bathurst".
- foobar1962 7y agoA most excellent observation.
- sitharus 7y agoIt’s a super frustrating thing about the US. They’ll say ‘this summer’, but being in the Southern Hemisphere it’s winter. Month names are so much easier. Next rant: which Timezone are we talking about.
- taneq 7y agoOddly enough I'm used to the summer/winter mixup but spring and "fall" still trip me up. Which is weird because you'd think I could just map "fall" to "spring" and be done with it.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago> Being raised in Brazil, on a urban environment there are basically two seasons: Summer and Winter, the rest is just transition between them. Agreed. This has been bugging me for a while. Over here in Poland, between the yearly variations in temperatures and the differences between urban and rural areas, I don't see how the concept of "Spring" and "Fall" make any kind of sense. Not when in a small city where I live "Spring" starts up to month later than in a large city 70km to the north. Why not switch to two seasons, Summer and Winter, and use equinoxes as split points? The seasons would at least have a nice definition then: summer = days are longer than nights; winter = nights are longer than days. EDIT: Speaking of the article, I can't imagine how this super fine-grained classification could work. The usual four seasons have already so much variation in when they start vs. when phenomena associated with them actually happen; I can't imagine e.g. "Geese fly north, the first rainbows of the year appear. - Apr 4" working as anything but "April 4 ± 1 month", which kind of defeats the purpose of this classification.
- mjlee 7y agoI think you misunderstand the purpose of the classification. It's not to determine the date from the season or the season from the date. It's to be able to say "Sparrows were late this year - the last three times that happened there was an insect problem, let's keep an eye out for that."
- TeMPOraL 7y agoI might have. But wrt. your example, my point is that "sparrows were late / early this year" is just something that's being said every year. Nature doesn't work off a clock; there's plenty of noise and oscillations in these phenomena. I'm not convinced such observations are useful.