Which Season?

Posted on February 15, 2017 by Administrator Posted in Computer Science, Python - Intermediate, Python Challenges, Solved Challenges

Did you know?:

Though we all agree that a calendar year is divided into four seasons, people sometimes disagree on the dates when these seasons start or finish. Many bodies, for example meteorologists, adopt a convention for the purpose of presenting statistics by grouping the twelve months of the year into four three-month seasons, for example March, April and May being taken as Spring.

In this case the seasons could be defined as follows:

From	To	Season
1^st September	30^th November	Autumn
1^st December	28/29^th February	Winter
1^st March	31^st May	Spring
1^st June	31^th August	Summer

Other scientists and astronomers prefer to define the four seasons based on astronomical events known as the equinoxes and the solstices. The equinoxes occur in March and September when the Sun is ‘edgewise’ to the Earth’s axis of rotation so that everywhere on Earth has twelve hours of daylight and twelve hours of darkness. The solstices occur in June and December when the Earth’s axis is at its extreme tilt towards and away from the Sun so at mid-day it appears at its highest in one hemisphere and at its lowest in the other.

The exact dates for the solstices and equinoxes vary from one year to the other but are around the 21st of the months mentioned above.

From	To	Season
21^st September	20^th December	Autumn
21^st December	20^th March	Winter
21^st March	20^th June	Spring
21^st June	20^th September	Summer

Your Challenge:

Write a computer program that retrieves today’s date. The program should then display the season for this date based on the astronomical definition of the four seasons.

We have started the code for you but have only worked out the dates for Spring. You can now complete the code to cater for all four seasons.