Submitted 1 year ago by TheAvarageNerd@lemmy.world to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
I’d expect the shortest day of the year to also be the coldest, with the coldest season of the year spreading out equally on both sides of it.
Several cultures do use it to mark the middle of winter. Celts and Chinese come to mind. They are communiting a different set of information when they do it.
It’s a social construct but it’s based on the equinoxes/solstices being evenly spaced, relatively objective, and easy choices.
I’ve always kind of figured this was the actual origin of the swastika and why it was created independently by various cultures. The arms from the center are the solstices and equinoxes and the trailing arms from the elbows are the seasons that follow.
Interesting thought, but not all cultures historically broke the seasons into four parts as is common now. The current common four season status quo is very Euro-centric.
Wouldn’t solar observation pretty much universally divide the year into something divisible by four? Unless you’re directly on the equator, there are four points in a year and four points of direction (other than ‘right here’).
I haven’t read deeply about world calendars, but do know that the solstices are pretty much universally recognized.
Not a history or anthropology buff, but I have a general feeling that four pointed symbols are often tied to the solar year. You can build a solar calendar with a stick and rocks.
Indeed First Nations Australian’s had many more “seasons” and Australia being a huge country differwet areas had different seasons.
To answer the original question, it’s because the earth is very large and retains the heat from warmer times preceding the solstice in the water bodies and the ground, like a buffer, so there is a lag time for things to lose that heat and get to the coldest air temps. As an analogy, if you heat up some rocks in the oven, then turn off the oven, the rocks will still stay hot for a long time and gradually cool off.
Ever notice during the summer the hottest part of the day is usually around 3 or 4 in the afternoon instead of at noon? Same thing, just on the order of months instead of a day.
That seems to be specific to where you are
If the days start cooling down at noon for you, you’re closer to the outlier set than me.
Solstice sure as hell isn’t the first day of winter of all of us, we got first snow on October or November.
Where I live we got green and brown
Seasons of Bergen, Norway:
December - February: Cold and dark and wet season. Stock up on antidepressants, good food, “Hygge”-paraphenelia, asthma medication and remain indoors.
March - mid-July: Cold and green season.
Mid-July: Summer!!!
Mid-July - August: “pretend it is still summer”-season. Yes, we can grill and drink beer in the garden dammit just put on an extra jacket.
June - August: Wet and windy season.
September - November: Soggy cold season. Shoes and jackets go to the Drying Rack, not on thr regular rack.
Damn, that sounds a lot like Don’t Starve Together seasons. How do you handle the human-size mosquitoes during the wet season though? 🤔
Seasons in Texas:
June 5-October 25th: fuck you it’s 100+° F / 38° C. Most non-native plants die if they receive direct sunlight all day. It’s 85°F / 30°C at night.
October 26th - December 10th: fuck you it’s 90° F / 32° C but also 40°F / 5°C in the morning; you’d better have 2 sets of clothes for the day
Dec 11th - Feb 28th: actually decent weather
March 1st - May 1: it’s getting hotter but also raining a lot so it’s muggy but the weather is still tolerable sometimes
May 2 - June 4: Hot and humid, sensory nightmare, air outside feels like your lungs have been filled with a damp blanket. 95+% humidity at all times.
Seasons of Lahore, Pakistan (imo):
Why call it 2nd spring? I though the more used name is autumn
This OCD horseshit is why we “needed” metric.
I once again come to inform that “the start of winter” changes depending on where you are.
So in you case that is just how it lines up, but where I live the winter starts October 14th.
Isn’t it because in temperate northern hemisphere regions January and February tend to be the coldest months of the year?
An old answer I saw said that Europe (where conventions originated) has a bigger lag in temperatures than North America has. We both lag and the lowest temps are commonly in Jan-Feb.
Why does it matter for Europe? Winter solstice is an astronomical event. Also probably practiced in China earlier.
Two things because I’m not sure what you’re referencing. 1) We inherited a shit ton of European norms and terminology. 2) The cold weather in Europe has much more lag because of their geography. Large bodies of water, which Europe is surrounded by on 3 sides, smooths out and slows temperature changes.
Labeling it the beginning of winter is a cultural thing.
It’s a modern convention. In the Celtic calendar solstice marked the middle of winter and older Christmas carols mark Yule as midwinter. m.youtube.com/watch?v=1_R3GPkIDeM
It doesn’t? Winter starts weeks before the solstice.
Winter does not start on the same day everywhere.
That article is just as useless as the comment it replies to, because it fails to acknowledge the fact that marking the start of the season with the solstice is only a convention that some places observe. Others do not.
Take an ice cube out of the freezer. Drop it in a glass of water. Take the temperature of the water immediately after you drop the ice in. Take it again after 5 minutes. Which measurement is going to be colder?
Drop a red-hot nickel ball into a glass of water. Measure the temperature immediately, and then again after 5 minutes. Which measurement is going to be hotter?
Basically, the surface of the earth holds heat, which causes the atmospheric temperature to lag behind the heat input from solar insolation. The cold surface is still warming long after the summer solstice; the hot surface is still cooling long after the winter solstice. The temperature extremes are closer to the equinoxes than the solstices.
It’s a convention. And not one that everyone follows. In Australia we use meteorological seasons, which start on the first of the month. So today is precisely one third of the way through summer.
Because of what you said, I do think that the way we do it is better. It puts the solstice (the day literally called “midsummer”) closer to the middle of the season, and also makes more sense because it puts seasons aligned with the human calendar.
Yup. “The map is not the territory” as Alfred Korzybski put it.
Not sure if it is technically correct, but I think of it like the momentum of Earth’s atmosphere. It takes a lot of momentum to alter the system. The days getting a little longer by a few minutes depending on latitude makes little difference. We are still dropping in average temps the further towards the poles.
Riding a bicycle everywhere for years in Southern California, this was something I would think about a lot on the commutes in the dark of winter, and the wind and rain patterns. Like here, I know if it will rain based on the wind direction alone. I only check the weather when I’m too lazy to go outside or something odd is happening. After the solstice there seems to be more turbulence that is added to the system. There is more of a back and forth between on an off shore flow patterns. It is our rainy season here, and we have nights get around 10°F cooler. This is when I break out my 40°F layers. On a bike, everything is still skin tight. I can shed some layers but don’t like to stop to do that. I have specialty gear for every 10°F of temperature drop. If I wear 40-50°F gear in 50-60°F temps, I will sweat like crazy and then freeze from being wet. I wear my coldest gear a lot less than I did 15 years ago, but I still haven’t needed it this year. I will in the months to come.
Most people are not connected to the weather and outside world very directly like this in the West. In my experience, the solstice marks the low point where I have around 6 weeks until things start getting better.
This is a great question. I’ve always wondered this!
That’s what I thought. the atmosphere is a big slow-reacting sponge. The coldest day of the year is usually in early February. By that time the slow lengthening of daylight since the solstice starts to warm things back up.
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brotundspiele@sh.itjust.works 1 year ago
There are (at least) four different definitions of winter:
In other cultures there might be vastly different seasons. In many tropical countries you’ll only have the dry season and the monsun season.