Newsflash for the Herd Animals: Meteorology Is Not Astronomy

It boggles the mind that the same meteorologists who know that June, July, and August days are counted when calculations are made on the average temperature for summer nonetheless broadcast the summer solstice that falls three weeks into June as the first day of summer. To do so in the context of weather forecasts is nothing short of intellectually dishonest. To an unfortunate extent, those meteorologists may simply be following the herd of tradition at the expense of thinking for oneself. The human brain is suited for much more than a herd-animal mentality.
 
“What’s the difference between meteorological and astronomical seasons? These are just two different ways to carve up the year. While astronomical seasons depend on how the Earth moves around the sun, meteorological seasons are defined by the weather. [Meteorologists] break down the year into three-month seasons based on annual temperature cycles. By that calendar, spring starts on March 1, summer on June 1, fall on Sept. 1 and winter on Dec. 1.”[1] Therefore, meteorologists who broadcast the summer solstice, which falls between June 20-22 depending on the year (as per leap years), as the first day of summer can be reckoned as intractable herd animals in their own profession. Distinct from the weather, as “the Earth travels around the sun, it does so at an angle relative to the sun. For most of the year, the Earth’s axis is tilted either toward or away from the sun. That means the sun’s warmth and light fall unequally on the northern and southern halves of the planet. The solstices mark the times during the year when this tilt is at its most extreme, and days and nights are at their most unequal. During the Northern Hemisphere’s summer solstice, the upper half of the earth is tilted toward the sun, creating the longest day and shortest night of the year. This solstice falls between June 20 and 22.”[2] This does not signify the first day of summer in terms of climate or weather, and yet too many meteorologists continue to mislead the public by stating on a weather graphic that the first day of summer falls on the summer solstice.
At most, meteorologists should constrain themselves on the summer solstice to announcing that daylight hours are most on that day (and least on the winter solstice, which falls well into December rather than on December 1, which is the first day of winter as we know it. By June 20-22, summer as we know it here below on Earth is well underway. During that week in 2025, parts of North America and Europe were already in a heat-wave, so it would be ludicrous to claim—especially by meteorologists as they should know better—that meteorological summer has just begun. And yet the basic category mistake continued unabated.

A television station in Boston, MA misleading the public as if June 20, 2025 were the first day of meteorological summer even though the graphic itself shows a heat-wave coming up! (left). On the right, Weather.com shows the forecast high then for London, UK. Obviously, June 20, 2025 was not the first day of meteorological summer in the Northern Hemisphere, so the claim to the contrary by meteorologists is nothing short of puffed up ignorance based on a category mistake broadcasted publicly by people who should know better because weather is their profession. Meteorology and astronomy are distinct domains, even though they are related. Maybe meteorologists in London should have telephoned those in Boston to pass on the tip that 90F in London is well into meteorological summer rather than its first day. 

That cognitive phenomenon is aptly described by Nietzsche in regard to his infamous claim that God it dead. Even though he states that he is referring to a particular conception of God—the Abrahamic one in which God is both vengeful and omnibenevolent—he is been thought to have been an atheist. Rather, his claim that adding “Vengeance is mine, sayeth the Lord” to a deity that is omnibenevolent is to place an internal contradiction in that conception of the divine, as vengeance contradicts benevolence. The people responsible for this contradiction had no idea what they had done—their murderous act of discrediting an extant conception of the divine. Like light coming from the most distant star but not yet reaching Earth, news of their own deed did not arrive to them even as they had blood on their hands. Similarly, news of committing a category mistake has not reached the meteorologists who know that calculations regarding temperatures in a summer include June, July and August and yet broadcast that the first day of meteorological summer doesn’t “arrive” until the astronomical “summer” solstice. News of their own confusion and conflation hasn’t reached them yet, and yet their recurrent deed should be obvious to them especially, as their profession is meteorology. Perhaps astronomers could step and change the names of the astronomical “seasons”—not even using that word—so the public might realize that astronomy and meteorology are two distinct, albeit related, domains. Even astronomy is misleading in this respect in calling quadrants of the Earth’s orbit “seasons.” Therefore, I submit that the professions of both meteorologists and astronomers are at fault in enabling the confusing category mistake wherein two distinct domains are conflated. 

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1. The Associated Press, “Sunshine Abounds as the Summer Solstice Arrives,” APnews.com, June 20, 2025.
2. Ibid.