When IS Summer's last day of 2018?

The Autumn Equinox is at 9:54 pm EDT tomorrow. We're sure that someone, somewhere, might be able to disabuse us of the following quibbles, but not even Google has satisfied us thus far and we don't believe these questions warrant awakening Siri.

• How can equal periods of day and night begin tomorrow at a time when there's only 2 hours and 6 minutes left in the day? Does this expose the arbitrary capriciousness of our 24 hour day?


• Is there somewhere that "officially" identifies the geographic location where Equinox starts, sort of the way New Year travels around the world.


• We live near St. Paul, MN. There the day length closest to 12 hours is on September 25th. Why isn't that the Equinox? In calculating length of day and night, where does dawn and twilight fit in?


• There's plenty of light before sunrise and after sunset. What are we actually measuring?


• Is the last "day" of Summer today or tomorrow, since the Equinox is after sunset tomorrow?


• How, if at all, will climate change affect our definition of seasons, for example, "Landsat-derived Spring and Autumn Phenology, Eastern US - Canadian Forests, 1984-2013"

Autumn dawns in the North Country

Photo by J. Harrington

This has all confused us enough that, after walking the dogs in a gusty Northwest wind (a sign of Winter in our North Country) and a temperature well below 60℉, we're now eating an ice cream cone in order to celebrate the end of Summer for this year. Maybe we'll eat another cone tomorrow unless we can confirm that today is indeed the end of Summer and daytime tomorrow is the first day of Autumn.

End of Summer

By Stanley Kunitz

An agitation of the air,  

A perturbation of the light

Admonished me the unloved year

Would turn on its hinge that night.

I stood in the disenchanted field

Amid the stubble and the stones,

Amazed, while a small worm lisped to me

The song of my marrow-bones.

Blue poured into summer blue,

A hawk broke from his cloudless tower,

The roof of the silo blazed, and I knew

That part of my life was over.

Already the iron door of the north

Clangs open: birds, leaves, snows

Order their populations forth,

And a cruel wind blows.

********************************************
Thanks for visiting. Come again when you can.
Please be kind to each other while you can.