On Thu, 01 Jun 2006 00:12:16 +1000, Greg Johnson
yodeled:

On Wed, 31 May 2006 21:08:16 +0800, "badwilson"
wrote:

Yup. Here's a question. Why are they saying on the local news that the
first day of winter is June 1? Wouldn't it be June 21? In Canada that
would be the first day of summer so I figured it would be the opposite
here. I mean the solstice isn't going to change depending on which
hemisphere you're in. I'm getting quite confused...

The convention is that Winter is June-August. They seem to prefer
sticking to calendar months for this sort of thing, and late August can
certainly be cold enough to merit the label. On the other hand, May can
be pretty chilly itself, so it's unclear to me exactly why this set of
months was chosen. If you said June 21 was the start, then you'd either
have to call Winter less than 1/4 of the year long, or call most of
September Winter, and that's just not going to fly. September is
normally too warm here for that.


I was in Victoria in August, and it was what I would call early
spring. People's gardens were starting to sprout.


Theresa
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