When we turn the calendar to the month of December tomorrow, we have closed several meteorological seasons and started the meteorological winter season.
Meteorologists have elected to use a standard three-month grouping to identify each meteorological season. Hence, September, October and November are considered the autumn or fall meteorological season, while the months of December, January and February are the winter season. You will note that the winter solstice, marking the day where the length of daylight is least in the Northern Hemisphere is still three weeks from today, falling on Friday, 22 December 2018. Since the coldest temperatures typically fall in mid to late January, the meteorological winter tends to be centered on the coldest time of the year in the Northern Hemisphere.
The end of November also marks the end of the official hurricane season in the North Atlantic basin, which includes the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean. Since this just concluding season was active, with several major hurricanes, we considered the 2018 hurricane season in detail in this Monday's Supplemental Summary.