Why settle for 4 seasons when NC has 12? Welcome to second summer. What’s next?

North Carolinians sometimes joke that we don’t hide insanity here; we parade it around on the front porch and offer it a glass of iced tea.

That goes triple for North Carolina weather, which could be diagnosed with multiple personality disorder.

Four seasons? That might be plenty for people in more pedestrian climes who value predictability and seasonal transitions as smooth as a Carole King lyric: “Winter, spring, summer or fall…”

There’s a reason James Taylor didn’t record his version of that mellifluous tune until after he had left the Tar Heel state, and it might be because here, seasons don’t follow each other in an orderly fashion so much as they come crashing together like bumper cars at the State Fair.

Four seasons? We’ll take 12, thanks.

Is this summer or fall?

Yes.

You may recall that it was 98 degrees at RDU International Airport on Aug. 1, and that during the first half of the month, it was humid and hazy and the air conditioning was laboring like it owed Duke Energy money.

We were living then on what farmers call Hell’s Front Porch, which follows summer but feels more harsh because the breeze has stopped blowing and peach season is coming to a close.

And then, last week, the humidity and the temperature dropped, a change so swift it was like an eccentric aunt we hadn’t seen in years had dropped in unannounced in a short dress and a crazy new ’do and we were supposed to act like it was just the most normal thing.

Old-timers call that False Fall, and it’s so reliable that Starbucks brings back its pumpkin-spice coffee flavoring right in the middle of it.

Auntie was gone when we got up on Monday, down the road in a cloud of dust. Who knows when we’ll see her again.

Now here we are, in Second Summer. The National Weather Service has issued a hazardous weather outlook for central North Carolina, calling for actual temperatures in the upper 90s by Wednesday and Thursday and heat indices as high as 105 degrees.

What are the 12 seasons in North Carolina?

A couple of years ago, PBS North Carolina walked us through a version of the social media meme about the 12 seasons using supportive data from the N.C. Climate Office. Farmers sometimes have slightly different names for the sub-seasons, but they all capture the mad mambo that is North Carolina weather.

These 12 seasons have no regard for the meteorological calendar or the amount of available storage space for sweaters or swimsuits.

They are:

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

According to this schedule, Actual Fall is up next but it’s not due until at least the second half of September.

What about hurricane season?

That one overlays on top of half of the others, running from June 1 to Nov. 30. It, too, is supposed to be wild this year, bringing a much higher number of tropical storms and hurricanes than an average year.

So far, there have been five named storms in the Atlantic this season. September is historically a busy month for tropical storms.

As of Monday afternoon, the National Hurricane Center was watching two tropical waves in the Atlantic. Neither is expected to develop into a tropical storm within the next seven days.

This story was originally published August 27, 2024 at 6:30 AM with the headline "Why settle for 4 seasons when NC has 12? Welcome to second summer. What’s next?."

Martha Quillin

The News & Observer

919-829-8989

Martha Quillin writes about climate change and the environment. She has covered North Carolina news, culture, religion and the military since joining The News & Observer in 1987.