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> this Winter is warm with minimal gas burned so far I feel like I'm going crazy as this is not the first time I've seen / heard this argument. What does winte
by ThalesX 4y ago
> this Winter is warm with minimal gas burned so far
I feel like I'm going crazy as this is not the first time I've seen / heard this argument. What does winter mean? I thought it was the months from December to February. I don't understand the narrative that we're in a warm winter at all. Winter, just like Game of Thrones, is coming.
- jonasdegendt 4y agoPeople are just throwing fall and winter together, but it has been an incredibly mild fall so far and that’s definitely been suppressing gas prices. We’re pretty much mid November and I haven’t even turned on my heating, it’s crazy.
- ThalesX 4y agoJust a couple of months ago (2?) there was an article on Hacker News about the arctic vortex falling apart making for an unusually hot autumn and a very bad winter. I don’t know how it’s going to pan out but where I am from, yesterday was basically late spring and today is very cold.
- dividedbyzero 4y agoCould it have been this? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32985927 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32985927
- throwaway932489 4y agoWikipedia has an interesting note "Cultural influences such as Christmas creep may have led to the winter season being perceived as beginning earlier in recent years" I think I've always considered November to be winter, and at some point I picked up that Christmas is in the middle/even towards the end to break it up and give everyone something to look forward to, so I'm always a bit surprised seeing talk of winter in the future tense once I've put on the winter duvet/started wearing a coat all the time/turned on the central heating (not this year). Equally anything in Feb seems firmly Spring. But I'm not trying to force this on anyone!
- cronin101 4y agoIn many parts of Northern Europe, at least, February is often the absolute coldest month (most likely for snowfall in UK, for example). So for heating worries, we’re definitely not out of the woods come February.
- KevinGlass 4y agoHere in New England, USA November is firmly in Fall/Autumn And Feburary is firmly Winter. March is also Winter until the last week.
- soperj 4y agoIn Alberta November is Firmly in Winter, same with February (normally the coldest month of the year). Most years October & April also fall into it. Only month I haven't seen snow is July.
- mindslight 4y agoYou forgot The Marmot.
- Fogest 4y agoI realized this is exactly what has been happening for me. Because of even how early things like Christmas shows and stores switching into Chrismas mode happens it really does make it feel like Winter is late. But really it's just that culturally Christmas has started happening earlier.
- seiferteric 4y agoI always thought that the shortest day shouldn't be the first day of winter, but rather the middle, so then winter would begin in late October, and summer would begin in late April.
- teslabox 4y agoThe oceans are Earth’s heat buffers. Summers are when the ocean stores heat, winters are when it releases heat. There is more land in the northern hemisphere, more ocean in the Southern Hemisphere. Summers get hotter in the north, winters get colder. This is because land does not store/release nearly as much heat as ocean.
- themitigating 4y agoIt's currently 71f 22c at 19:00 where I live in NY. Historical average for the day is 56f 13c and the high is 74f so only a few degrees off
- scruple 4y agoIn SoCal we're having an unusually cool fall so far. Today's high was 68f, it's currently 64f at 5:30PM. I don't think I remember temperatures this low happening in early/mid November in the 15 years that I've lived here.
- protomyth 4y agoWe in ND just got our first winter storm and it was bad enough to cancel work. We are not exactly apt to cancel because of snow. I get the feeling this is not going to an easy year on the heating budget.
- MobiusHorizons 4y agoIn this case all that is meant is the months during which heating is required. For many parts of Europe this will include a substantial portion of fall months and usually extends into spring. It’s just the easiest way to talk about it.
- ThalesX 4y agoIt's definitely not the easiest way to talk about it. I've used heating, in Europe, in late spring and in my cabin even in summer. Am I just living in a perpetual winter?
- EdwardDiego 4y agoJust read "the cold time of year" when you see "winter" and you'll get past this.
- ThalesX 4y agoI'm not trying to 'get past this', I'm trying to express my disbelief at the fact that: A - Things have gotten to the point where we can't talk about a damn season without personal interpretations of it; B - This has seeped into Hacker News, a forum I thought was for more diligent folks.
- lozenge 4y agoFor a street artist, winter might mean when it's too dark to perform. For a farmer, it might mean when the animals need to be kept in a barn. And for a commodities trader, it means when demand for gas is high.
- EdwardDiego 4y agoLanguage is fluid. And with climate change, traditional seasons aren't nearly as useful in discussion as they used to be. In my area of my country, our autumn used to be the time of big stable highs giving rise to clear days and frosts overnight. Great time of year to go hiking, minimal chance of intense rainfall or snowfall in the high country. Now the weather in autumn resembles that in spring - predominant north west winds that bring intense rainfall to the west, heavy snowfall on the tops, and hot dry days to the east. I feel you're still getting hung up on definitions that are becoming more obsolete by the year. Lastly, from my limited experience of Germany, the most miserable weather tends to come late October - November. It's not technically winter, but it's a frigging cold and miserable time of year.
- colechristensen 4y agoThe part of the year where it is cold does not start on the shortest day of the year. There is the part of the year that is cold and there’s the part of the year between the shortest day of the year and the equinox, both are winter. Winter doesn’t mean a lot in mild places where you can wear a tshirt out most days of the year. Where it snows, winter is more or less the time of the year where it snows. People need to relax a little about absolute definitions of things.
- II2II 4y agoIn a sense, the astronomical definition of winter has a lot more meaning in a connected world. I grew up in a part of Canada where the (colloquial) winter started at the end of October and ended at the end of March. I now live in a part of the country where it starts in late December and runs until the end of April. If you're trying to convey time by saying that something happened last winter, different people are going to have very different ideas of when that means. Then again, perhaps we shouldn't be discussing time in terms of the seasons. Anyone in the southern hemisphere experiences the opposite, while people living in equatorial regions don't really share our notions of seasons (from my understanding).
- colechristensen 4y agoDifferent places have different seasons. Some places have monsoon season, parts of New England have mud season. Referring to a time period based on what the weather is like for a significant portion of the year makes sense when that is a relevant part of the comparison. Winter official definition is basically “astronomical Q1” which honestly isn’t all that useful in most cases. (It’s a bit stupid that our months, major holidays, and year almost but not quite align with the astronomical milestones).
- II2II 4y agoWith respect to the astronomical definition of the seasons, they line up reasonably well where I currently live (coastal) but not with where I grew up (interior). Likewise, holidays probably lined with the seasons at one point in their history. What we are likely seeing is the gradual shift between natural phenomena and a human construct, i.e. the calendar. We carry a lot of historical baggage with us, even if we rarely think of it.
- thrown_22 4y agoRemember the people who told us two week to curb the spread? They have a new catch phrase.
- Glawen 4y agoWinter is the coldest period where you always require to heat (in northern Europe), but you still need to heat your house in autumn and spring. I usually start my gas boiler in October, but this year I started it only last week because we had 20-25 °C through the month, it felt like summer
- chippiewill 4y agoWinter can be used in multiple ways. The way you're thinking of is the calendar based season which for the Northern hemisphere is Dec, Jan Feb (with each season being three consecutive months) - more specifically this is called the meteorological season. The astronomical season (which is the more "official" one) starts on 22 December and ends on 21 March. But there's also a more informal usage, which is definitely prevalent in Europe, which is used to refer to the cold months of the year where you would typically have the heating on. For the UK this spans October to March for example. That doesn't mean you never have heating on in April, and it doesn't mean you _have_ to have the heating on in November. It's just a useful way of thinking about the period of time when gas/energy usage will be high and allows you to describe whether the period as a whole has been mild or particularly cold and the impact that's had on heating.
- dogcatter 4y agoAre you American? I'm British but lived in the USA for several years, and I think there's a cultural difference here. Americans attach precise boundaries to the seasons, whereas in Europe 'Winter' means something more like the part of the year that's normally cold.
- mmarq 4y agoIn Europa proper, Winter is the period of the year between Dec 22nd and Mar 21st. In the UK, we have 5 months of Winter and 7 of Autumn, that move around the year like Ramadan.
- kordlessagain 4y agoYeah, it's usually −171°C there by this time.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ChrisMarshallNY 4y ago> 7 of Autumn I saw what you did, there… I lived in London, back in the 1970s, and can confirm. Generally, a rainy autumn. Sort of like Seattle, for the US folks familiar.
- kmlx 4y ago> In the UK, we have 5 months of Winter and 7 of Autumn, that has not been the case for the past few years. it’s getting hot much earlier.
- Y-bar 4y agoI'm European since the birth of my grand-grand-grand-parents and until today I had not heard of the "Dec 22nd and Mar 21st" version of winter. I have only ever heard of these two: - Calendar winter: December first to February last. - Metorological winter according to our meteorologists: "the period of the year where the daily average temperature is below zero degrees Celsius" [Sweden: https://www.smhi.se/kunskapsbanken/meteorologi/arstider/vinter/vinter-1.22843 https://www.smhi.se/kunskapsbanken/meteorologi/arstider/vint...] and [Norway: https://snl.no/vinter https://snl.no/vinter] Today I learned of a third definition.
- guerrilla 4y agoYes, winter hasn't started here yet (except meteorological winter in some northern places.) They mean fall. It has been an exceptionally warm fall though, so much so that we haven't even had to turn on our heaters. So the argument is still sound.
- escalt 4y agoPeople are saying this because so far it has just been much warmer than usual at this time of year, and snow in November wouldn't be the most unusual thing, and most people just assume snow=winter. Some stats of my weather station in South Germany from this year and last year. It is much warmer this year, and even last year was pretty warm Oct 2021: Avg: 8.5°C Min: 0.5°C Max: 22.0°C Oct 2022: Avg: 12.7°C Min: 4.9°C Max: 21.5°C Nov (1st to end of 11th) 2021: Avg: 4.1°C Min: -1.9°C Max: 9.4°C Nov (1st to end of 11th) 2022: Avg: 7.8°C Min: 0.9°C Max: 15.8°C I have no clue about weather forecasting and I can't exclude a drastic change in the coming months, but right now it just doesn't look like that at all
- bamboozled 4y agoSo interestingly, we will see a massive decrease in energy usage from heating thanks for climate change. Actually pretty cool.
- geraldwhen 4y agoYes, and air conditioning is far more efficient than heating. https://www.pud3.org/blog/articles--blog/behind-the-scenes-at-pud-3/are-air-conditioners-more-efficient-than-heaters https://www.pud3.org/blog/articles--blog/behind-the-scenes-a...
- bboygravity 4y agoThis "it's a warm winter" is the equivalet of "we're all going to die, there's a new variant".