Seasons Start And End Dates May 2026

We mark seasons on calendars—March 20, June 21, September 22, December 21. Equinoxes and solstices, precise to the minute. Spring begins. Summer ends. Neat. Tidy. Predictable.

And that’s enough.

Spring never arrives on a Tuesday. It sneaks in through a single warm afternoon in late February, the smell of wet soil, a robin that came back too early. Summer lingers long past the equinox—in golden hour light, in the sound of crickets stubbornly singing through September. Autumn’s first red leaf often falls while summer still has legal custody of the sky. And winter? It doesn't wait for the solstice. It arrives with the first frost that cracks the puddles before Thanksgiving. seasons start and end dates