On the demise — in N.C., at least — of the four seasons

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Folks in some tourism and marketing departments like to chirp that when it comes to weather, their states’ climates feature four honest-to-goodness seasons.

We can now boast of at least few more.

I’ve only lived in North Carolina and Kansas — both have a defined winter, spring, summer and fall — but have always preferred our weather here. The simple reason: in N.C., our extremes are less volatile. And here, there aren’t as many tornadoes, not as much snow. Our winter wind chills don’t routinely hit 20-below, and we don’t get those blast furnace-like winds blowing up from Texas that make going outside in the summer feel like you’ve just stuck your head inside a broiler oven.

Still, there are trade-offs. Among the meteorological musings we ponder here that we didn’t get in the midwest: hurricanes and months of unrelenting humidity.

Regardless of how you feel about climate change science, there’s no getting around the notion that weather oddities are on the increase. Seasons, too, it turns out. The N.C. Climate office, in its blog post last week summarizing 2022, riffed on a viral tweet by RDU Airport from September to confirm that last year, our state had not four seasons, but 12.

“It was a year that started and ended with totally out-of-season weather, and included just about every extreme in between, from hot to cold, wet to dry, and frozen to fire,” the post read. “Ultimately, 2022 was the product of both persistent climate patterns and trends that have become familiar in recent years, along with the return of several weather features we hadn’t seen in a while.”

In case you missed it, here’s a list of those resultant seasons: 1. Winter. 2. Fool’s Spring. 3. Second Winter. 4. Spring of Deception. 5. Third Winter. 6. The Pollening. 7. Actual Spring. 8. Summer. 9. Hell’s Front Porch. 10. False Fall. 11. Second Summer. 12. Actual Fall.

I crow to my Kansas friends about our stunning autumns here in the Old North State, which often feature six to eight consecutive weeks of my idea of perfect weather: cool mornings, deep blue skies, afternoon highs in the 70s, low humidity. And on those 65- and 75-degree days we always get in January and February, I’ve been known to rub it in a bit by sending a Snapchat photo of me working on our sun-dappled porch or walking the dog in shorts and sandals.

But there’s always the flipside. Last year, we had “The Pollening,” which felt like it lasted forever. We all know pine pollen season usually goes on for about three weeks in N.C.; in 2022, it went on for six. And summers are stretching longer, too. The Climate Office says N.C.’s summer of ’22 lasted from mid-May until late September — interrupted and punctuated only by a very brief “False Fall” and then by Hell’s Front Porch, a nearly month-long stretch from mid-June into July where our average daily highs were well into the 90s and heat indices topped the century mark.

Too hot for too long for my taste.

I’m not sure about you, but I’m willing to dispense with few of those 12, and implore Mother Nature to cut the list down to a more manageable number.

How about usual four, plus an extended False Spring and a couple of well-timed False Falls?

That’s only seven. No need to be greedy.

Bill Horner III can be reached at bhorner3@chathamnr.com and @billthethird.