AccuWeather's Tony Laubach breaks down the differences and explains why there are technically two different starts to the spring season.
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00:00 If you are sick of winter, you're in luck.
00:03 Today is the first day of meteorological spring.
00:06 And enjoying the first day of spring in Northern Colorado
00:09 is AccuWeather's own meteorologist, Tony Laubach.
00:12 He joins us now to tell us what makes this difference
00:16 from astrological spring to meteorological spring.
00:20 Tony?
00:21 (Tony laughs)
00:23 - Well, one's easier to say than the other.
00:25 That one is for certain.
00:26 And yes, we were talking about enjoying
00:27 the spring-like weather here in Northern Colorado.
00:30 Our AccuWeather real field temperature tickled 70 degrees.
00:34 How's that for a first day of meteorological spring?
00:37 But Tony, dear viewers, you are asking,
00:40 what is meteorological spring versus the spring that I know
00:43 that happens here in about three weeks from now?
00:46 Well, I'm gonna tell you, dear viewer,
00:47 exactly what the difference between the two of those are.
00:51 Meteorological spring, which starts on the first,
00:53 is a calendar-based starting of the spring
00:56 versus astronomical spring, which is the start of spring
01:00 when we get the equinox, when we have just about equal day
01:03 and equal night.
01:04 That changes year to year,
01:07 and not only does it change date to date,
01:09 but it changes time to time,
01:10 and that does make a difference for us weather nerds.
01:14 - Equinox always happens around the same time every year,
01:16 but the exact date and time changes from year to year.
01:20 And so that variability makes it a little different
01:22 to compare.
01:23 Meteorological seasons are set by the calendar,
01:25 so it makes it really easy for us meteorologists
01:28 to compare one season to the next.
01:30 - So if you think about this in a logical way here,
01:35 in terms of us keeping records,
01:36 we like to keep things within the season.
01:38 So we divide our meteorological seasons into three months.
01:42 Meteorological spring going from, go March, April, May,
01:45 then we go into summer, that goes three months,
01:47 and so forth and so on.
01:48 That allows us to keep better records seasonally
01:51 versus this year, for instance,
01:52 where an astronomical spring starts at 10.08 p.m.
01:57 on the 19th.
01:58 Now, that separates a day by two different seasons,
02:01 which makes it very, very difficult to keep records
02:04 in terms of consistency from year to year.
02:06 So that is why meteorological spring exists.
02:09 So folks like Melissa and I have a much easier time
02:12 instead of doing things the hard way,
02:13 and us meteorologists,
02:15 we like to do things the easy way when possible.
02:18 - Sounds pretty good to me.
02:19 We can also dive into solar spring too,
02:21 I suppose, at some point, Tony,
02:23 but we wanna thank you for that explanation
02:25 'cause it is true, we do need to keep those records going.