Celebrating the first day of spring

And some things I've been enjoying lately

It was the first day of meteorological spring on Wednesday. I won’t lie, I didn’t really have any idea what that meant when my friend Emma messaged me about it a few days ago. It’s an occasion that seems to have completely passed me by every other year but I’ve seen a few people posting about it this week.

From what I can tell (from National Geographic) it seems like scientists came up with meteorological seasons - which are all exactly three months long and based on annual temperature cycles - in order to be able to analyse data more easily. Traditional astronomical seasons, based on the Earth’s rotation around the sun, are apparently a bit of a nightmare because the solar year is actually 365.2422 days long and that .2422 means it doesn’t fit neatly into a calendar year. I’ve probably completely butchered that interpretation but maybe it gives you enough information to score a pub quiz point with one day.