First Day of Meteorological Winter

Some of you will greet the news with glee, others with a groan, but either way, today is the first day of meteorological winter. Right, we’ve still got another three weeks before the winter solstice, when the year’s shortest period between sunrise and sunset marks the arrival of astronomical winter in the northern hemisphere. But it sure looks like winter right now to me, and that’s what matters to meteorologists. For them, winter begins December 1, just as each of the other three seasons commences on the first day of its three-month block. Why? Because that arrangement corresponds better with how we experience seasonal weather in real life. Here in Michigan, we often get a pretty good hammering of snow in November, and by winter solstice on December 21 (or sometimes 22), we’re already usually pretty well socked in. It seems almost laughable when someone announces on solstice that it’s the first day of winter. Really? Could’a fooled us. We thought it began a month ago.

I woke up this morning to be greeted, very appropriately, by the year’s first snow accumulation. Yesterday temperatures opened in the low fifties, but they began dropping and the afternoon grew downright chilly. Today snow is falling, and out in the parking lot a woman is brushing the white stuff off of her car. It’s almost like winter has been consulting its watch, waiting in the wings and then entering the stage exactly on cue with a bucketload of lake effect. The snow will be with us for a few days, now, and the radar will continue to look a lot like the image on this page. Click on it to enlarge it, and get used to it, because you’ll be seeing a lot of similar pictures from now until meteorological spring arrives on March 1, 2011.

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