You may think you know the answer to the question, “When is the autumn season?” But do you? Watching the weather section of local news on television or the internet, you could be excused for getting the beginning date wrong because it is the meteorologist who has misled you. In itself, getting the exact day right is not a big deal; it is not as if the temperature can be expected to take a nose-dive on the first day of fall. The astonishing thing is that so many meteorologists either knowingly or out of ignorance present the astronomical beginning of the “autumn” quarter of the Earth’s orbit as the meteorological start of fall, for the two are different yet admittedly related.
The full essay is at "Getting the Seasons Wrong."
