Burlington, VT — A meteorologist based out of the Burlington Intranational Airport has a radical proposal to revamp the seasons. “Well, with climate change, the weather is so unpredictable these days,” explained Medea Rologie, junior weather forecaster at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association (NOAA) offices in South Burlington, in a recent interview. “One day, we’ll have a blizzard and windchills of twenty below. A week later, people will be running around in shorts because it’s fifty degrees and sunny. It’s very disorganized, and I find it personally offensive.”
Because the weather changes so rapidly, Rologie thinks that the old model of seasons — three months each of winter, spring, summer, and fall — no longer works. “Way back when seasons were invented,” she said, “it made sense to divide the year into chunks of time based on similar weather patterns. But, if we’re having a winter day, followed by a fall day, followed by a run of midsummer days, the old system falls apart.”
As an alternative, Rologie proposes that days can be labeled as winter, spring, summer, or fall, according to the meteorological conditions during that 24-hour period. “If we’ve got a day in January when the mercury jumps up to forty-five, and all the snow is melting onto the sidewalks,” she said, “doesn’t it make sense to call that a spring day? And if we get ten inches of snow the next day, we’ll call it winter. This way the weather will actually correspond to the seasons in the way that it used to.” She flourished a sheaf of semi-legible papers that she called “visual aids.”
Rologie’s new seasonal distribution would have 90 winter days, 90 spring days, 90 summer days, 90 fall days, and 5 or 6 days reserved for what she calls “WTF conditions.” A panel of experts, headed by Rologie, would meet weekly to examine the previous seven days’ weather. Meteorological conditions for a particular day would be averaged across the state to determine which season each day should belong to.
When confronted about the possibly needless complexity of her idea, Rologie waved away that objection. “But it’s logical and systematic,” she stated. “See?”
More visual aids were produced. They featured doodles of angry clouds and notes like “1. Revamp seasons. 2. ?????? 3. Profit!” “Everything will make sense again!” she insisted. “I’ve submitted this to my supervisors, and they’ve assured me that NOAA is taking this very seriously.”
Sonny Dayes, NOAA spokesperson for the New England region, stated that the organization was indeed taking Rologie’s idea seriously and would be taking action, mostly because the time she spent on it was interfering with her work.
Does this mean schools can have “summer vacation” in February and colleges can have “spring break” in October? At least we can all still have “mud season” in…mud season.
All bets are off. Indiana has summer school already.