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How many days until spring?
Spring falls on ….
Counted in your own time zone, —.
This counts to 1 March, the start of meteorological spring. The equinox falls about three weeks later, around 20 March.
The one people wait for hardest
Spring is the only season anyone counts down to with real feeling, because it is the only one whose arrival changes something you can feel on the way to work. Nobody is impatient for autumn. The gap between the meteorological start on 1 March and the equinox around the 20th matters less than the fact that by either date the evenings are already getting longer.
Light arrives before warmth
The useful thing about counting to spring is knowing what actually changes when. Daylight starts lengthening at the solstice in December, long before anything feels different; the clocks go forward in late March, which is when most people notice; and the temperature lags both by weeks. If you are counting to a feeling rather than a date, the clock change is the better target.
Why 1 March
Meteorologists split the year into four fixed three-month blocks so that one year's records can be compared with another's. Spring is March, April and May. The equinox drifts by a day or two because a year is not a whole number of days, which makes it a poor thing to build a calendar on and a fine thing to look up.
Questions
When does spring start?
1 March by the meteorological definition. Astronomical spring begins at the equinox, usually 20 March.
Which date does this count to?
1 March, because it is fixed. The equinox moves by a day or two each year.
Is it the same south of the equator?
No. The seasons are reversed — meteorological spring there begins on 1 September.