Today, the 21st of September, we celebrate the autumnal equinox, which is the formal end of summer and the formal beginning of autumn. Again, formally, the time between now and December 21 is autumn, at which point winter will begin.
You might ask, what is going on with the “formals?” Technical answer: today in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres the length of day and night will be equal. The real answer is that at six thousand feet elevation in the Rockies, autumn began three weeks ago and winter will arrive in late November.
That’s life in the high country. We get too much winter, and too little summer. That’s the downside, the upside is that summer here isn’t very hot but is very dry, meaning it is almost always comfortable.
So as you might imagine, we “snowbirds” are preparing to “fly” south to our winter quarters where the summers we avoid are blisteringly hot but the winters are comfortable. We drive nearly due south roughly 600 miles and leave the ice and snow behind.
We have spent the year in two places like this since the mid-1990s, before we retired from the university. Why not have nice weather year round, if you can?
Historically, it is retirees who have the freedom to be snowbirds. With the growth in work-from-home it may become popular with many younger folk.
