When are calendar makers and newspapers and such in this country going to give up basing season based solely on the earth's rotation around the sun, and move towards a system that's more closely reflective of actual weather on the ground and seasonal culture?

I feel like we're well into fall at this point. Climatological fall (per the climetologists) began September 1. Culturally, fall starts on or about Labor Day. We've got football season in full swing, kids are back in school, and so on and so forth. If you were renting a beach house, you'd be getting the off-season rate -- beginning weeks ago.

No one will ever persuade me that fall doesn't start until September 21-22.

It's the same thing with the other seasons, to some degree. Winter doesn't technically start until December 21st or so, but really December 1 is when climatological winter begins, and culturally we move from fall things like Halloween and Thanksgiving and towards winter things like Christmas around December 1st as well. No one is ever going to be able to convince me that with snow on the ground drinking eggnog at a Christmas party that I'm really just experiencing the late stages of fall.

John mike like this piece of info I found:

Moving away from the four 'classic' seasons, other periods have been suggested which fit more closely the various climatological phases of a year: for example, Hubert Lamb (1950), a noted British climatologist, proposed the following:

High summer: 18th June to 9th September
Autumn: 10th September to 19th November
Early winter: 20th November to 19th January
Late winter: 20th January to 29th March
Spring: 30th March to 17th June
This classification was based on his (and others, e.g. Brooks) analysis of British Isles weather periodicities.

FR REPLIES: Might work for British Isles, and maybe even for the Northeast U.S., but it can be snowing in the high country of the mountain West by late August and in the 90s in Baltimore in April. In the end, the concept of boundaries for seasons is pretty arbitrary. You could argue that our concept of the four seasons is pretty Eurocentric, and meaningless in many places on Earth. The equinoxes and solstices, at least, are observable events.

FR, I was not saying this is how it should be.
Just another way to look at things.
I did not post the entire piece.
The entire piece does address what you said.

Best -M-

FR: Thanks!

Interesting thoughts. So we have meteological and climatological, but there is also psychological. For me, psychological autumn begins on Labor Day; psychological winter begins the day after Thanksgiving; psychological spring begins on Valentines day; and psychological summer begins on Memorial Day.

The older I get, the more the old Celtic (cross-quarter) calendar makes sense, at least here in Baltimore.

Nov. 1 -- First day of Winter
Winter reaches its nadir at the solstice, adn then the days start getting longer. Spring is on the way!

Feb. 1 -- First day of Spring
The early-season snowdrops, crocus, etc. are starting to peak through, even though there can still be snow. By the time of the equinox towards the end of March, the days are getting much longer.

May 1 -- First day of Summer
We have lots of hours of daylight and it's getting hot. May is also considered the beginning of ground-level ozone season.

August 1 -- First day of Fall
The days are getting noticeably shorter. With schools opening later in the month, it's back-to-school shopping time, and summer vacations are winding down.