In January, is it winter in Australia?

netvor@lemmy.world to No Stupid Questions@lemmy.world – 77 points –

I mean, everyone knows that in January it's hot in Australia, and in July it's cold there.

But do Australians call it "winter" in January and "summer" in July? Or does just "winter" imply hot weather and beaches, and "summer" implies winter, eh, i mean, snow sports and wool socks.

And given that, most of the population lives in northern hemisphere, is there a body of dad jokes and culture tropes related to the fact that "we're different", or is it just too cringe and boring. (I realize both could be true on this one.)

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No, summer and winter are reversed in the southern hemisphere.

But more than that, the seasons aren’t even consistent within each hemisphere—the exact beginning and ending dates of each season vary from region to region depending on the local climate.

As an example, where I live near the equator we have seasons that are only a few weeks long. We alternate between "summer" and "winter". The quotes are because the only real difference in our seasons is how much rain falls since neither the temperature nor the amount of daylight changes much. Winter seasons are cloudy and wet and summer seasons are sunny and dry.

The concept of 4 seasons itself is very Eurocentric, and leads to the inaccurate belief that the seasons/climate are messy and unpredictable in Australia.

The native aboriginal peoples have their own season system for each region, which much more accurately describes the weather. For example, the aboriginal calendar identifies 7* seasons in Victoria.

*Edit for previously incorrect info which stated there were 6 seasons (different area of Australia)

That's actually really interesting, I had no idea. Do you have a link with the page to that image? It got jpeg'd and I'd like to read more.

Edit: thanks for the links all, really appreciate it.

found it the webpage it appears to have originally come from described it as being the Noongar 6 season calendar so the names on this chart are Noongar words from South Western Australia not from Victoria which is the South East, so maybe theirs are different.

Yeah if you think about it the idea of 4 seasons permeating culture has more to do with European colonization than anything scientific.

Well, here in Austria we get about a day of skiing less per year since the 2000s.

Also, for the northern hemisphere people, yes, Australia has snow.

also for Americans, Austria is not Australia

So was that a comment from an Austrian thinking the Australian posts was about Austria? Or was that an Australian who misspelled their country’s name? Or was that an Austrian who knew the post was about Australia, but they just wanted to talk about Austria?

Yup we’re in the middle of winter as we speak.

The season names relate to the weather, not the period of year. It would be odd to have Spring be when all the leaves are falling off the trees.

There’s also many different Aboriginal calendars which relate much better to what the weather is like compared to an imported European system.

So for example this month I should see the cold weather end, orchids and wattles start to bloom, and brown butterfly caterpillars to start feeding.

The wattles are thick with buds that will be blooming soon. That means trout fishing time!

I live in Brazil, we call cold season winter, hot season summer :). January is summer.

As a scandinavian who has worked in Brazil for two years I can confirm that Brazilians do in fact call two identical seasons differently based on whether it's closer to Christmas. I usually worked the night shift, and in July-ish, my Brazilian coworker usually wore a hat while on the backdeck while I was sweating like a hog.

That depends on where in Brazil you are, but yes,in the north (near the equator), winter is as hot as summer, and spring/autumm are the warmest seasons.

No - it's definitely Christmas in summer in Australia. But somehow my dear old Gran never got the memo, and insisted on making us sit down and sweat through a full roast Christmas lunch each year, sometimes in 40°C+ heat.

An Aussie friend from a forum I was on ages ago posted a video of his family's Christmas tree, and it blew my mind that they decorated it with snowmen and snowflakes and shit. They had a fire going, a big ass turkey or some such (baby emu?) on the table. Whole freaking classic Christmas affair.

Why? Why do you do this? If it flipped somehow, and Christmas now came during summer here in the US, I'd be decorating the tree with flip flops (thongs?) and sunglasses, and having mojitos with a light salad for dinner lol

Yeah, now I have my own family and we do our own Christmas, it's shorts, thongs, BBQ, seafood and beer.

When I was a kid we lived in Florida briefly.* On Christmas, we went swimming, did a cookout, and went fishing. It was awesome. Looked it up, it was 82f/27c that day. 2 months later, in February, we were in North Carolina, where there was snow on the ground, and huge chunks of ice floating in the lake at the campground we were staying at. The lake had a giant slide in it, about 50 feet/15 meters. Right in the middle of the lake. Me and my brother could not resist. Ended up swimming there on my birthday. Haha. There's no point to this story, hot Christmas just made me think of it.

*At times like this, I never know if I should explain things like Florida. On the one hand, I'm being presumptuous if I assume someone on the other side of the planet has a working knowledge of one of our 50+ subnational jurisdictions, on the other I'm acting like I have to explain Florida to someone who has access to a super US centric internet... Blegh.

I'm in Florida, and Christmas does get a tree but nobody expects snow, lol. But it's our cool season, still winter. What bothers me more is the harvest festivals in fall. Nothing much grows here in summer, in fall we are just ramping up the garden, so in that way it's more like spring in other cooler places.

I’ve never seen that in my whole life.

A roast for dinner sure, but never a fucking fireplace on.

And lunch has always been cold seafood while sitting out in the sun smashing beers.

So right now the summer Olympics are taking place in winter...

No, they're taking place in Paris

Except for the surfing, which is taking place in Tahiti. 'Course it's not really "winter" there because it's tropical, but still, it's at the same latitude as parts of Australia.

I'm in two places:

  • In Australia

and

  • in tears!! XD

'But do Australians call it "winter" in January and "summer" in July?' !!!

  • For future reference, every country on the planet calls their own cold time of year - Winter, and their hot time of year - Summer.

Except countries near the equator(halfway between the top and bottom of a world map), equatorial countries are hot all year and have a wet-season and a dry-season.

And given that, most of the population lives in northern hemisphere, is there a body of dad jokes and culture tropes related to the fact that "we're different", or is it just too cringe and boring.

Nothing anyone wound mention but there are some ironic Christmas clothing like a shirt with Father Christmas with sunglasses and cooking a barbeque, or a rashie with a knitted sweater pattern.

We are also aware that if a foreign studio announces a game or movie with a season for their release window they probably mean the northern season. Our studios tend to just use a month instead.

spending christmas in australia or new zealand has been one of my top bucket list items for decades.

My friends who grew up outside Oz find it weird that to me "it ain't Christmas unless it's scorching hot". To me the idea of having a cold Christmas is the odd one.