Meteorological vs astronomical fall: what's the difference?

AccuWeather

AccuWeather's Melissa Constanzer dives into the seasonal showdown-meteorological vs. astronomical fall and what makes each unique.  Fun fact: While meteorological fall always starts on Sept. 1, astronomical fall can vary slightly each year, depending on Earth's orbit-making it a bit of a moving target!

Transcript

00:00we've made it to September which means welcome to fall meteorological fall that is we've started

00:11officially today and you can see how the dates run from September 1st through November 30th

00:16I know you're saying it's not actually fall the calendar still says a few more weeks so you'd be

00:22right about that meteorological seasons are different than astronomical seasons which is

00:27what most people go off of as the starts and ends of the seasons and that is because we need to

00:32measure records and because astronomical seasons go off of solstice and equinox was happening at this

00:38point of time and can change the day of the month every so often we need a set period here to measure

00:46whether it was the warmest meteorological summer on record or the driest meteorological fall on record

00:51so fall falls in this chunk of time frame right here September to November so we are in it

00:58which means no more days till Labor Day but we do have 21 more days till the autumn equinox and like

01:05I said that's about the equinox or the solstice for astronomical fall what is that exactly well we know

01:12that the earth is on a tilt as it goes its way around the sun tilted either towards or away from

01:17the sun depending on the time of the year so if we look at the seasons here you can see autumn

01:23we're kind of in that transitional zone from when the northern hemisphere is tilted towards the sun

01:27in summer and when winter comes around in the northern hemisphere is tilted away from the sun which

01:33means we're losing daylight like it's nobody's business throughout September check out how we change

01:39most of us are losing minutes a day and in the northern tier of the nation places like Fargo more

01:45than 90 minutes is lost from September 1st to September 30th even Los Angeles and Atlanta lose an hour of daylight

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