Spring is here.

CyrilFiggis wrote: »

Spring traditionally starts in Ireland on 1 February. February will never be winter for me

Its dark at like 5 its so cold and wet and theres no flowers growing or leafy trees, how or why does anyone think this is spring

wakka12 wrote: »

Its dark at like 5 its so cold and wet and theres no flowers growing or leafy trees, how or why does anyone think this is spring

Ms. Cronin told me it was in junior infants. She was lovely.

Right so - based on the length of days.
Nov 1 2016 had 9:35:53 hours of daylight
Nov 9 2016 had 9:07:54
Feb 1 2017 has 9:09:12
Feb 8 2017 will have 9:33:57

For convenience we align the seasons to the beginning of the months. There is little variation in this from year to year. Its just as good a way to define the seasons as by the climate (not the weather- I remember it being 12 deg C and sunny on Christmas day one year and it being the same sometime in mid July. The only difference was the day was longer in July)

I find it hilarious that people ignore all the information given and just give a blanket statement of "well for it February is spring".

Well for me August is winter.
Sadly, I don't define seasons, weather does.

Not at all, you can get nice warm temperatures all the way into late September, recently the end of May has been nice enough but otherwise may is a fairly ****e month.

Spring is here? Oh, goodie!

Tell that to the feicing rain outside O.P.

topper75 wrote: »

By press I mean internet - people read articles from Al Jazeera, Huffington Post, RT etc. etc.

The EU wants to standardize things across their member states in so far as they can. The majority of EU territories have a continental climate. We are an outlier from that median but they will care as much as they cared when setting interest rates for a flagging Germany and a booming Ireland back in say 2005 :-). If we have always had our own ways of doing things - better stick by that. Of course belittling Irish calendar conventions isn't a secret conspiratorial objective of the EU commission, but it is worth watching where 'change' comes from especially with regard to attempts to fix that which is not broken.

This 'official' Irish body Met Eireann are paid by govt who are in turn in debt to outside interests. I don't see them becoming guardians of our traditions anytime soon.

I really don’t think Al Jazeera, RT, Huffington Post regard the change from Winter to Spring as a big news item nor do they have a major influence over Irish people’s thinking

Same as the EU: I really don’t think that the changing of seasons on Ireland is a major issue that they are trying to standardise. You are also completely wrong about the climate in Europe. The majority is not continental when you take the northern half of Europe into account.

There is nothing political in the timing of seasons.

As for Met Eireann, they are officially the official body in Ireland regarding weather and climate , so why are you using inverted commas? They are not guardians of traditions as you laughably say. They are scientists and I’m sure their work is independent from the government that you seem to think is trying to control the population via the setting of seasons.

The changing of seasons is based on Science, not traditions as you say.
Traditions are often based on religion or superstition and are totally unreliable.

Based on that I think it’s entirely logical that seasons are based on solstices as the earth has reached a point in its orbit around the sun.

Our seasons are also gradual and merge into each other. So a flower budding in February does not mean it’s Spring nor does snow in April mean it’s Winter