Debunking common myths about seasons

Growing up, I was taught that there were four seasons. There is truth to that. But one thing I've discovered as an adult is that I was long under the impressions that each season was equal in length: spring went three months (March, April, and May); summer went three months (June, July, and August); fall went three months (September, October, and November); and winter went three months (December, January, February).

I can definitively say that that's not true. March is definitely a winter month. September is definitely still a summer month. Fall (or autumn, if you prefer to call it that), based on what I've seen, lasts two weeks, more or less the last two weeks of October. Spring also is short, albeit much more variable. This year spring actually lasted a while, from sometime in late-April through late-June.

What I've concluded is that winter and summer are the long seasons, and spring and fall are the short seasons. It's reflected also in the rate of change of how much sunlight we get. I consulted a chart many years ago, from which I deduced that the days are really long from about May 1 to August 15, really short from about November 1 to February 15 (both spans of 3/12 months), and then either rapidly get longer or shorter over 2 1/2 month spans. You can find the chart "here"...

If I were a teacher in school and had to teach the subject of seasons, here is what I would tell my pupils:

1. summer lasts about 4 months (more or less from the beginning of June to the end of September and perhaps even into October).
2. winter lasts about 5 months (sorry! but it's true! from the beginning of November to mid-April sometime).
3. fall lasts really about two weeks, but longer depending of the length of the foliage season.
4. spring can last about a month or two, depending on how long winter hangs on, how much rain we get, among other things.

And most importantly:

The seasons fade into one another.

Contrary to what it appears that even I might have said thus far, oftentimes in months like November, like March and April, like May and June, and like October, we will see weather in both the season that we are leaving, as well as the new season that is coming. Often what happens when one season leaves and another begins to enter is we start experiencing a glimpse of weather in the new season for a day, and then return to the weather from the outgoing season for the next 2-3 days. Then another day of new-season weather, then maybe another day or so of outgoing-season weather. Eventually, the ratio between new-season weather and outgoing-season weather hits 50/50, and then after that we begin experiencing more weather of the new season and less of the outgoing season, until finally, when we are far enough into the new season that we have no more weather from the previous season, until the next year.

To close my point, in Chicago we had a snowstorm on Halloween this year. Here are photos from the following morning, after the snow had finished falling.

The temperatures shot back up into the 50s later that day.