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What is a Fall?
Fall also known as autumn is one of the four temperate seasons, the transition from summer into winter. In the temperate zones, fall is the season during which most crops are harvested, and deciduous trees lose their leaves. It is also the season where days rapidly get shorter and cooler, the nights rapidly get longer, and of gradually increasing precipitation in some parts of the world. Astronomically, some Western countries consider fall to begin with the fallal equinox (around September 23) in the Northern hemisphere, and the vernal equinox (March 21) in the southern hemisphere, ending with the winter solstice (around December 21) in the Northern hemisphere and the summer solstice (June 21) in the Southern hemisphere. Such conventions are by no means universal, however. An exception to these definitions is found in the Irish Calendar which still follows the Celtic cycle, where fall is counted as the whole months of August, September and October. In Chinese astronomy, the fallal equinox marks the middle of fall, which is deemed to have begun around the time of Liqiu (around August 7). On the other hand, meteorologists count the entire months of March, April and May in the Southern hemisphere, and September, October and November in the Northern hemisphere as fall. Albeit the days begin to shorten after the summer solstice, it is usually in September (Northern Hemisphere) or March (Southern Hemisphere) when twilight becomes noticeably shorter and the change more abrupt in comparison with the more lingering ones of summer. Fall is often defined as the start of the school year, since they usually begin in early September or early March. Either definition, as with those of the seasons generally, is somewhat flawed because it assumes that the seasons are all of the same length, and begin and end at the same time throughout the temperate zone of each hemisphere. |