It's snowing in Toronto today. Yesterday it started snowing for the first time this season.

In Toronto, Southern Ontario and perhaps most of Canada, we have adjusted our notion of when the seasons occur largely based on weather and holiday weekends. Officially, each season is supposed to have three months with the following start days (for the northern hemisphere, give or take a few days depending on your country)

Spring, March 21
Summer, June 21
Autumn, September 21
Winter, November 21

According to Wikipedia meteorologists go by the following
Spring: March, April, May
Summer: June, July, August
Autumn: September, October, November
Winter: December, January, February

Which is still fine as far as each season is concerned as they each own three months and they're all quite happy as they have an even share.

Not so here. We define our seasons as the following
Spring, April to start of May 2-4 weekend (Victoria day)
Summer, May 2-4 weekend to Labour Day weekend inclusively (approximately August 31)
Autumn, after Labour Day weekend (approximately September 1) to October 31
Winter, November 1 to March 31

So clearly Winter gets the lion's share with five months, Summer still hangs on with a bit extra totalling just over three months and Spring and Fall get shafted with only two months. Hell, Spring is only like a month and three weeks.

All because it snows in November, doesn't start to warm up until April and we love to mark our Summers with cottage weekends.

Thanks Fall 2005. It was nice knowing you.