Why there are two different fall seasons

AccuWeather

Sept. 22 marks the start of astronomical fall, while Sept. 1 signals the beginning of meteorological fall. AccuWeather's Tony Laubach explains why there are two different definitions of the season.

Transcript

00:00we're now in meteorological fall yes it does accuweather's autumn anthony lawback i love this

00:06i'm sure he wrote it himself okay he's live uh from denver colorado to explain why we see two

00:12different starts to fall yeah i absolutely did write that i'm so glad you said it thank you

00:20autumn anna you made my morning yes it is the start of meteorological fall what on earth does

00:27that mean you might be asking well who really cares right any excuse to start fall is a good one

00:33but this particularly makes sense especially if you are in the scientific community the

00:39meteorological community and let me show you why today september 1st it's always september 1st it

00:46is always the start of meteorological fall if you look at when fall starts this year it starts on

00:52september 22nd and that only happens sometimes usually about half the time but nonetheless

00:58there's a variation in when astronomical fall starts versus when meteorological fall starts

01:04and the reason we have the meteorological fall that starts on the 1st of september is for number

01:09keeping purposes it's to make the spreadsheets easier to keep track of when we talk about records

01:14during the fall season the problem if we use the astronomical fall for instance is say you have a

01:21record that falls on let's say this year september 22nd that could change if you got a record say

01:28that falls on september 21st when sometimes the fall equinox happens that could mean that for that year

01:34your records in the fall the following year september 21st could easily be still a summer day so i know

01:41that that seems kind of nitpicky if you're thinking about it in terms of like why does that make sense

01:45it does try writing a spreadsheet that mathematically has an equation that settles exactly when the fall

01:53starts astronomically september 1st much much easier that always starts on midnight and that's the other

01:59part too is fall doesn't always start at the same time every year so technically you could get all over

02:05the place with those numbers so really it is just for a bookkeeping thing for the most part it allows

02:09us as meteorologists climatologists folks that keep numbers for weather data records all that

02:15kind of stuff allows us to keep it straight for the seasons and that's why meteorological falls

02:21starts on september 1st meteorological winter december 1st meteorological spring march 1st meteorological

02:28summer on july 1st wait march april may yeah no june 1st i lied see it's monday on labor day folks

02:35my brain is laboring trying to figure out all these numbers but that's what it comes down to

02:39it is numbers and it makes things easier for the record keeping but a lot of folks we have different

02:47triggers in terms of what we start fall for some it's start of football season for me it's the start

02:52of pumpkin spice season fortunately this year temperatures kind of felt more like fall though

02:57we're going to ramp up here in northern colorado as we get into the week so still got that summertime feel

03:02so while it doesn't technically feel like fall for us meteorologists it is fall for us for the number

03:10keeping i got a curious question tony so i never i don't know the answer to this i know you like it

03:16cooler and i know you like to storm chase is fall your favorite season because we do have storm chasing

03:21season coming up with more severe weather in the fall season so what's your favorite season

03:26my favorite season has hands down always been fall not just because of the weather i like cooler

03:34temperatures i like it where we can still get snow we still get storms and as i mentioned there's that

03:40big f word football that is the biggie for me as well i thought it was gonna be pumpkin spice that

03:46sent him over the edge because he really sold that very well this was all great but i think the biggest

03:50takeaway confirmed tony laubach pumpkin spice fan all right that's what we know we got to gift him

03:56for christmas there you go all right thanks tony for that report and a little bit of a breakdown as

04:02to why we do what we do yes great explanation

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