We passed the vernal equinox the other day, and we entered the season of summer.

Why did we wait so long to make it official? Hasn’t it felt like summer for weeks?

I believe we need to tweak the timing of our seasons. Make them simpler, more rational, more accurate.

Currently, we wait for four big moments in the planet’s rotation of the sun to change seasons.

The two equinoxes (equinoxae?), when all over the world the day exactly 12 hours of light and dark all over the world, which occur about March 20 and September 22 … and the two solstices, when our days are longest or shortest (June 21 or September 21), depending on which hemisphere you are in.

Only after we have hit those dates do we change seasons.

But why?

We associate particular weather patterns with the seasons. In simplest terms, summer is hot, fall is mild, winter is cold, spring is mild.

But those conditions do not track particularly well with our formal/historical seasons. Each of them has a lag time built in, which we can easily correct.

I hereby propose that (in the northern hemisphere) summer begin on June 1, autumn begin on September 1, winter on December 1 and spring on March 1.

That moves our seasons closer to the weather we associate with them. And gives us three whole months of each season; no untidy fractions, no mid-month shifts.

Generally, by December 1, wherever people have real winter, it is already cold. By March 1, it is already beginning to thaw. Summer is going by June 1 and leaves are falling off trees on September 1.

But, at present, we wait another three weeks before declaring a new season.

And wouldn’t it make more sense to have winter straddle the shortest/darkest day of the year, and not start after it? Just as summer should straddle the longest day of the year?

Let’s do this! June is summer. The whole month. Let’s call it what it is.