Ready to say hello to the official start of the fall season of 2023? It’s the time of the year when we crave apple cider doughnuts and search for perfect pumpkins as the September air turns cooler and the leaves turn color.
This year, autumn officially begins at 2:50 a.m. Eastern time on Saturday, Sept. 23, in the United States and the rest of the northern hemisphere, because that’s the date the autumn equinox arrives as our weather pattern makes its annual transition from summer to fall.
What is the autumn equinox?
The autumn equinox — also known as the autumnal equinox, the fall equinox or the September equinox — occurs when the sun moves directly over the Earth’s equator, bringing virtually the same amount of daylight and darkness on that day.
Essentially, the Earth’s tilt and the sun’s position are responsible for the season that’s associated with scarecrows, pumpkins, football, Halloween, Thanksgiving and colorful leaves. It also results in shorter days and cooler temperatures.
The word equinox was derived from two Latin words — “aequus” (the Latin prefix for “equal”) and “nox” (the Latin word for “night”). The equal refers to the nearly equal amount of daylight minutes and darkness minutes on this day — about 12 hours of each.
Didn’t fall start on Sept. 1?
For most people and most years, Sept. 22 is the first official day of the fall season — and some years (like 2023) the date lands on Sept. 23. Weather forecasters, however, consider Sept. 1 the start of autumn, based on annual temperature cycles.
Meteorologists and climatologists split the year into four “meteorological seasons,” each of which lasts for three full months and begins on the first day of the month: Sept. 1 for autumn; Dec. 1 for winter; March 1 for spring, and June 1 for summer.
When is the next full moon?
The September “harvest moon” of 2023 will be a special one, because it will be the fourth and final “supermoon” of the year. It gets the supermoon designation for appearing slightly bigger and brighter than the average full moon.
The harvest moon will officially turn full at 5:58 a.m. on Sept. 29.
When is the next solar eclipse?
The fall season of 2023 will include another special sky event: a partial solar eclipse, known as an “annular solar eclipse” — which will be visible across North America and South America on Saturday, Oct. 14, 2023.
In this kind of eclipse, the moon passes in front of the sun but doesn’t exactly match up, leaving what looks like a ring of sun around the moon. From the New Jersey region, the eclipse will make it appear a bite has been taken out of the sun, similar to the last partial solar eclipse seen in our region in June 2021.
That eclipse created a fascinating “ring of fire” in the early morning sky.
A bigger solar eclipse — the first major one in our region since the Great American Solar Eclipse of August 2017 — will occur on April 8, 2024. That one will be a total eclipse, with the moon blocking the entire sun for more than 4 minutes, according to GreatAmericanEclipse.com.
When do the clocks ‘fall back’ this year?
Daylight Saving Time will end at 2 a.m. on Sunday, Nov. 5, when the clocks will “fall back” one hour. Theoretically, that gives us an extra hour of sleep that night. It makes for lighter mornings and darker evenings through the winter in standard time.
Daylight Saving Time will begin again on March 10, 2024, when our clocks will have to “spring forward” by one hour.
When does winter start?
The meteorological winter season of 2023 will start on Friday, Dec. 1, and run through the end of February 2023. The astronomical winter season will begin on Thursday, Dec. 21, and end on Monday, March 20, 2024.
Dec. 21 is also known as the winter solstice.
Note: Parts of this article were originally published in September 2022, and the dates and times have been updated for 2023.
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Lehigh Valley Live staff writer Steve Novak contributed to this report.
Len Melisurgo may be reached at LMelisurgo@njadvancemedia.com
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