Bernard Burton wrote:

Eric,
Most people take the spring season as March, April and May, at least for
meteorological purposes.Your other seasons correspond to common
practice.

--
Bernard Burton
Wokingham, Berkshire, UK.
............
Yes, context is everything.

I assume you mean by "meteorological purposes" essentially the
acquisition of scientific knowledge. So that your three month seasons
are sort of "pure maths" seasons. As opposed to "meteorological
forecasts" whose purpose is presumably specified by an enduser like a
pilot or a local authority. So their seasons are sort of "applied
maths" seasons and may not be happily regimented into three months
segments. Let me give you an e.g. :

Seasons were agricultural. A local, retired (at 74), Suffolk
livestock farmer said recently that when you reached February, you
were only half way through the winter. I never fully grasped what he
meant until I looked at the photographs for the 1963 winter that
someone here pointed to (sorry, cannot find that post - about a week
ago) when another mentioned that his children did not believe that he
walked across the ice-bound Medina (sorry, cannot find that post
either). I am still reeling at the quite extraordinary photos of
Whitby and the video of Herne Bay where the sea froze for two miles
out. Let alone the thin coat and uncovered hair of the lady on the
pier whilst contemplating miles of drift ice and small bergs growling
by... in Kent. Tough lot then.

If livestock keepers had never seen a winter like that, perhaps their
hay or straw reserves would have been insufficient to keep the stock
alive and so, like the early Icelandic and Greenland Viking colonies,
the stock died from starvation over the winter. The snow bound roads
would not have allowed bales to be moved around the country to any
degree as happens in globalised today.

However, if a livestock keeper had seen a winter like that before, s/
he might take the hay-conservative view that winter is half way
through when you reach February. And Spring starts in, say, May when
the sugar-rich spring grass gets going. Summer starts in June to
August. And autumn is September and October. So a season's length
may depend on what you are doing in them. I have never seen weather
anything like the 1963 Herne Bay photos (but then I have never lived
in Scotland where apparently that sort of thing is commonplace)...so
I wonder how long they thought that 1963 winter lasted. Looks long
and grim.

Spring starting in March ? Really ? Ode to Joy and all that - in
MARCH ? De gustibus nil disputandum !

Thank you for a most informative and entertaining forum and seasons
greetings to all.
--
Giles