All of the comments above show why the real season starts are not based on such vagaries as the berth of certain domesticated animals (man has far too great an influence on that to be called a natural event), the blooming of certain flowers or trees which can vary drastically in the same local area, let alone across the country, or even the weather itself.

The problem lies in the fact that the seasons are not a meteorological event. We only have seasons due to an astronomical event, i.e. the tilt of the earth’s axis to approx. 23.3 degrees in relation to its orbit around the sun. Without that tilt the slightly elliptical nature of our orbit would be insufficient to create the variation we currently see in our weather & climate.

Our planet would become a smaller, solid version of Jupiter which has an axial tilt of only 3 degrees. Jupiter is divided up into strong belt zones that see very little interaction between them. Without the axial tilt we now enjoy, life on earth would not be what it is today. The polar and tropical regions would be almost uninhabitable. The diversity of life and developement would have been stunted without the mixing brought about by the axial tilt.

On that basis the cardinal dates in relation to the axial tilt and our orbit are the equinoxes and the solstices. These dates are fairly constant. There is a slight variation over the years due to irregularities in our orbit, but these are minimal compared to large variations seen in other ‘seasonal indicators’ above.

This brings us back to why we now have a contradictory set of dates for the start of the seasons. In simple terms the calendar is out of line with the seasons. The blame for this can be placed fairly & squarely on the political and religious leaders of the western world at the time christ was born, i.e. the Roman hierarchy who missed the best chance to correct this. It is obviously inconvenient to have a season starting three weeks into a month as is the case now.

The only problem that I have with shifting the start date back to three weeks before the cardinal dates is that we have to me the crazy situation with March being described as an autumn month, while December is touted as a summer month. Some people will jump up and down and say, “But December is one of the hottest months here!” It depends upon where you live. For many people the majority of March is more summer like in weather outlook than the ave December, even if the figures don’t stack up.

The ‘Official New Zealand Seasons,’ are the result of our current politicians looking for an expedient answer to the age old question of, “When do the seasons start?” In the past this question was asked of astronomers whose job it should be to answer an astronomical question relating to time. In stead people mistakenly believing the seasons to be a weather based phenomenon asked meteorologist to determine the start of the seasons. Sorry, not the meterologist’s job. Meteorologists are tasked to report on how the seasons went, and how they might go, but not when they start!

If you want to see how our counterparts in the ‘old countries’ do it just watch CNN, BBC news etc over the next few days. You won’t see any mention of a change of seasons from them, but you will from Sept 24th N.Z. time when the northern autumnal equinox occurs.