PLEASE NOTE MY CHANGE OF TOPIC TITLE FOR MY POST
RayProudfoot wrote: ↑Fri 22 May 2020 9:36 pm
I wonder how antipodeans store their summer records?
The BOM in Australia attributes summer to the year in which it ends; for 2019 example see page title in browser for
http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/s ... mary.shtml and then look at page title in bold when you read actual page. For them 2020 already has summer season completed, they are still in autumn.
I
start my years with September, to my mind that is when the weather really changes in a way that I experience, lower sun, shorter days, a feeling that as summer is over it is a new beginning. It is when people say "after such a mild winter, we expected a better summer" or similar rot, yes I think most ordinary people in UK connect each winter to a following summer.
I do follow the convention that each season is 3 month long, that does lead to simplification unlike using any astronomy data.
I don't see a sudden change in climate swapping any other months, yes sometimes the precise weather chooses to change with the month, but not its general feel.
Not from February to March, nor from November to December [I would agree with Freddie (to my mind the Met O web site revamp may make it look friendlier, but it is a lot harder to find what you want than the old design) that is UK standard], nor from December to January, and not September to October (that Steve Loft selected as default for Chill Season start).
With a September start I can easily compare the chill hours and frost seen for gardeners, and get a much better comparison of whether it has been a wet or dry season. That is my choice. I swapped from the paper records of most of my life to computer file based ones in 2009, from then onwards I maintained both daily and monthly summaries, made easier by swapping to Cumulus 1 from September 2010. I first did seasons starting in September, to match my first use of Cumulus. For a couple of years I experimented with different starting months. By 2014 when I had all my data summaries in a database, I settled up on my September knowing it was easy to recalculate season data for past data if I ever regretted using September start. Although I restarted weather recording in my current home just last January, a helpful meteorologist in a nearby village who has monthly spreadsheets available on his web site helped me get data back to September (he responded to my PMs for what was not on his website) so here my web scripts still report by day, by month, and by season starting in September.
I'm not a professional meteorologist, just someone fascinated by weather all my life, and I do what suits me, not what some professional meteorologist says, or what some third party package does. I give advice, but allow freedom for others to disagree. Equally I don't see a need to follow the crowd.