Why do we have two winters in a year?

Question

Spring will spring on us in less than a week now, so winter will be over but there will be another winter starting on the 21of December this year (although the wintery weather will start before probably). That gives us two winters in one year! Seems unfair! Why can't we start the year with spring?!

Answer 1

I think the way things are now (meteorlogically speaking), we can forget about seasons! We seem to be getting Spring-like days in Winter, Winter days in Spring, and Summer's moving into Autumn. In some parts of the world it's raining bucketloads and flooding people out of their homes, whilst other parts are turning into desert. Added to all this, hurricaines, typhoons and earthquakes seem to be on the increase. Even the poor gardens are confused!

Answer 2

Seasons are not about distance to the sun, but instead about the ANGLE of solar radiation relative to the surface. This is due to the tilted nature of the Earth axis going from pole to pole. That´s why when it´s summer on one hemisphere, it´s winter on the other. If distance to the sun would be the explaination, you should have summer all around the planet in a particular moment of the year! During summer, the sun crosses the sky at the highest point (near the zenith, that is, the angle being close to 90 degrees) possible for your latitude. In winter, you´ll notice that the arc it follows in the sky is closer to the horizon, so radiation arrives at low degrees. The angle influences the energy the radition brings (heat) which thus gives the characteristic temperature of the seasons. Take the ecuator: it always receives sun beams at 90 degrees, so at the ecuator line, its always summer. Spring and fall, are just the transitional stages between maximum and minimum degrees for the radiation. Hope this helps.

Answer 3

No there is one winter/year it just overlaps. The reason the seasons are wierd is that the earth is tilted at 23.5 degree angle, so the sun does not hit the earth uniformly, ie the heating of the planet is not distributed evenly, one side is always colder than the other. As earth orbits around the sun, the part tilted "toward" the sun is heated more effectively...

If there was no tilt, the area around the equator would always be summer and the north would always be winter... like the polar caps

Answer 4

Its how you define the seasons.It is generally accepted that winter is December,Jan,Feb Spring is March,April,May,summer is June ,July,August and Autumn is Sept,Oct Nov.Of course the actual weather we get is not always appropriate to the season.For example it is lovely this week but the forecasters are saying it will be very cold with frost next week. Hardly Spring is it?

Answer 5

Really it is only one winter season but it is just at the beginning and end of a year. We really get most of our snow where I live in February so that is why we can't start the year with spring!

Answer 6

you need to get a graph chart to show the weather over 365 days of year then sort between 4 seasons then work out how many days are summer,autumn, winter spring, then decide do we actually have two winters

Answer 7

seasons dont follow years, there is one winter, spanning from december when autumn ends to when spring begins the next year, so technically your wrong, but sometimes it can seem like there's more than one cos it's so long!

Answer 8

we have more months of spring summer and autumn we have 1 month december which is like the start of a new year because new year is 31st december or the 30th

Answer 9

silly muppet, the calendar is a human invention while the earth cycle is part of mother nature's grand scheme. Mother nature doesn't recognize this calendar as being anything more than a poppycock waste of effort.

The pagan calendar starts each year at the vernal equinox as the beginning of the year.

Answer 10

The seasons didn't invent the Gregorian calendar.