Why Isn't the Shortest Day of the Year Also the Coldest?

I had long wondered why the winter solstice was the beginning of winter instead of the middle of winter. Old poems and songs speak of the solstice as "the bleak midwinter," when it was clearly marked on the calendar as the beginning of winter. Were our calendars designed wrong? But eventually I realized that the seasons are categorized the way they are because of the real world weather and how it affects people. It's really cold after the solstice, all the way until the vernal equinox. But why does the world work that way?

MinuteEarth explains with helpful graphs and charts that go deeper into the struggle between sunlight and temperature than you might expect. This video is less than three minutes long; the rest is an ad.

#calendar #solstice #equinox #seasons