History Main / BizarreSeasons

* Decades before ''Helliconia''; Creator/HalClement wrote ''Cycle of Fire'', in which the planet Abyormen has both weeks-long and much more extreme many-decades-long seasons due to being a binary system. Cultures alternate between groups adapted to the hot and cold phases of the longer cycle.

* Decades fore before ''Helliconia''; Creator/HalClement wrote ''Cycle of Fire'', in which the planet Abyormen has both weeks-long and much more extreme many-decades-long seasons due to being a binary system. Cultures alternate between groups adapted to the hot and cold phases of the longer cycle.

* ''Literature/{{Discworld}}'': The Discworld has the normal four seasons, but a Disc year is 800 days long so the season cycle happens twice over. The idea is that the seasons are determined by the position of a given area of the Disc to where the sun passes in its circuit around it; summer is when it's closest to where it sets or rises, and winter is when it's farthest from either point. The full 800-day year is the time it takes for the Disc to do a full circuit around the shoulders of the giant elephants holding it up; since any given spot on it will pass through a "summer" zone twice (when it reaches the sun's rising spot and when it reaches its setting one), the seasons all happen twice over the year. However, because the books still treat "a year" as being similar in length to a normal Earth one, this was retconned as saying that only wizards and learned people use the "true: year and most people consider a single cycle of seasons (400 days, close to our 365) to be a year.

** One article [[http://mimir.net/outlands/calendar.shtml describes the seasons of the Outlands]], which are almost nothing like the seasons of the Primes. Instead, they reflect the movement of the "planar winds" bringing weather from the Outer Planes. "Summer" is when pleasant weather comes from the Upper Planes, "Winter" when bad weather comes from the Lower ones, "Spring" is Lawful, with gradually improving weather as the wind moves from Lower to Upper, and "Autumn" is Chaotic and shifts the other way. Each season has four months, in each of which the weather reflects one particular plane.
** Another article has [[https://mimir.net/culture/philosophies/the-philosophical-year/ the seasons of Sigil]], which are even weirder. Each month was assigned to a faction by the Guvners, and even though this was something close to aribtary, ClapYourHandsIfYouBelieve means that this calendar now affects, not so much the physical weather of Sigil (which remains constantly damp) but the overall attitude of the city's inhabitants. Spring is dominated by harsh lawfulness (the usual triad of Guvners, Hardheads and Mercykillers), Summer by self-regard (Signers, Takers and Sensates), Autumn by fatalism (Godsmen, Athar and Bleakers) and Winter by entropy and decay (Dustmen, Sinkers, and Xaositects). The Transcendental Order have The Pivot, a month that marks the transition between Summer and Autumn, and the Free League and Revolutionary League have claimed the random three weeks a year when Sigil's weather ''does'' clear up, somehow taking the philosophical weather with it, as their own month, Leagueheim.

** The Mimir.net ''TabletopGame/{{Planescape}}'' fan expansion [[http://mimir.net/outlands/calendar.shtml describes the seasons of the Outlands]], which are almost nothing like the seasons of the Primes. Instead, they reflect the movement of the "planar winds" bringing weather from the Outer Planes. "Summer" is when pleasant weather comes from the Upper Planes, "Winter" when bad weather comes from the Lower ones, "Spring" is Lawful, with gradually improving weather as the wind moves from Lower to Upper, and "Autumn" is Chaotic and shifts the other way. Each season has four months, in each of which the weather reflects one particular plane.

* ''Literature/TheBrokenEarthTrilogy'': There are five seasons: spring, summer, fall, winter, and death. These Fifth Seasons are volcanic winters (often concomitant with other environmental disasters, such as emissions of poisonous gas or ocean acidification) that can last anywhere from months to over a decade, and occur once every century or two due to extreme geological instability. This is a relatively new state of affairs, beginning only a few tens of thousands of years ago. Human civilization survives because everyone lives in a state of constant preparation for the next Season.

* ''VideoGame/IWasATeenageExocolonist'': Vertumna, the planet housing the exocolony implied to exist in the title, has five seasons:

* ''TabletopGame/SwashbucklersOfTheSevenSkies'': Floating islands experience six seasons over the course of a 360 day year, as each of six skies passes overhead: The Mists are warm and foggy, the Jungle Sky is even warmer and filled with floating trees, the Sky of Thunder is full of rain and lightning, the Sky of Stones marks early autumn, the eerie and colder Ghost Sky marks late autumn, and the Sky of Frost is icy and nearly impassible. (The seventh sky, the Sky of Fire, sits at the central axis of the world dome and fries anyone who tries to enter.) Ships travelling far can cross into a sky earlier or later, and ships bear the brunt of each sky's weather, notably stones, lighting, and trees.

* ''TabletopGame/InvisibleSun'': Because of the surreal nature of Actuality, seasons may pass normally in one place, pass in a different order, or even be skipped altogether. This doesn't just hold for the different Suns; because of the bizarre way things work under the Invisible Sun, it can even scale down being different seasons between different districts within the same place. In Satyrine, the magic-centered district of Fartown is permanently locked into autumn, even while the seasons pass normally in the rest of the city.

* ''TabletopGame/SwashbucklersOfTheSevenSkies'': Floating islands experience six seasons over the course of a 360 day year, as each of six skies passes overhead: The Mists are warm and foggy, The Jungle Sky is even warmer and filled with floating trees, The Sky of Thunder is full of rain and lightning, the Sky of Stones marks early autumn, the eerie and colder Ghost Sky marks late autumn, and the Sky of Frost is icy and nearly impassible. (The seventh sky, the Sky of Fire, sits at the central axis of the world dome and fries anyone who tries to enter.) Ships travelling far can cross into a sky earlier or later, and ships bear the brunt of each sky's weather, notably stones, lighting, and trees.

* The Grand Line of ''Manga/OnePiece'' is filled with with bizarre weather between islands. From clear to snow to rain in minutes. In fact, the weather stabilizing is a sign that you're near an island. As for the islands themselves, localized weather patterns can result in islands that are a single season for much of the year, giving us "Winter Islands" or "Summer Islands". This creates a minimum range of 16 potential weather patterns as you have the extremes of winter on a Winter Island to summer on a Summer Island. And that's not even going into the second half of the Grand Line where you have things such as constant rains of lightning.

* ''ComicBook/{{Bone}}'': While the seasons in the valley proceed mostly as normal, winter has the habit of arriving... very suddenly. As in, the valley gets unremarkable late summer weather and foliage until the very moment winter sets in, at which point a solid blanket of snow several inches thick plummets out of the blue and covers the whole valley, instantly transitioning things to mid-January type weather. It's also implied that this is specifically a valley-only thing -- the Bone cousins, who come from a city on the other side of a desert from the valley, are evidently used to more traditional autumns, as they were caught rather off-guard by their first winter in the valley.

* ''VideoGame/IWasATeenageExocolonist'', Vertumna, the planet housing the exocolony implied to exist in the title, has five seasons:

** Wet is the three months of perpetual rainfall.
** Glow lasts one one month during which the colony never sees the sun and most of the light comes from GlowingFlora (technically some of the mushrooms). This one has some colony residents so creeped out about it that they refuse to leave their quarters. It turns out to be right call, as this is the season during which the local wildlife is guaranteed to have a go at GaiasVengeance towards the colony.

** Dust, the closest to summer, is three months of very dry weather.

* ''VideoGame/IWasATeenageExocolonist'', Vertumna the planet housing the exocolony implied to exist in the title, has five seasons:

** Pollen, the closest to spring, is three months favored by the vast majority of the local plant life to produce an easy to guess substance in large quantities. The resulting mix coats everything in pink powder for the rest of the entire season and air that puts quite a strain on the respiratory system of anyone who would have been allergic to pollen back on Earth.

* In ''VideoGame/{{Borderlands}}'', seasons in Pandora are long. As in almost a decade long apiece. When the big conglomerates colonized the planet, they made the mistake of arriving during the winter cycle. Seven years later, spring came, which meant mating season for the planet's fauna. The conglomerates have since basically given up on the planet, considering the incredible hassle the sudden infestation of skags, rakks, sylithids and other beasties has caused.
* In ''VideoGame/TheSims2'', with the "Seasons" expansion, you have four slots which each can hold any of the four seasons. Bizarre combinations and inexplicable orders are very doable.
** The neighborhood that comes with this expansion pack has no summer by default. Its "year" consists of spring, autumn, winter, and winter.
* In ''VideoGame/PokemonBlackAndWhite'', and its sequels ''VideoGame/PokemonBlack2AndWhite2'', the season changes every month, so it could very easily be autumn in the middle of March. Due to how the seasons are scheduled, this ironically makes summer the shortest season. (February is a summer month in Pokémon)
* ''VideoGame/KirbySuperStar'' has planet Floria, where the seasons change whenever you enter a door.
* In ''VideoGame/FinalFantasyXII'', one area has a wet season and a dry season. This doesn't change until the plot demands, and it will change back when the plot allows, but after that, it's set on a cycle. Definitely ''not'' an annual one, either.
* ''VideoGame/KingOfDragonPass'' and its prequel/successor ''VideoGame/SixAges'', being set in the world of Glorantha (see Tabletop Games above) have the same five seasons: Sea, Fire, Earth, Dark, and Storm, with a sixth "season" of Sacred Time marking the beginning of a new year (though Sacred Time is unplayable, since the ''only'' thing your people will do during this time is worship, make sacrifices, and take stock of their lives relative to the past year). Sea is roughly mid-to-late spring, and is when crops are planted. Fire is summer, and the heat means it's a good day to go bash your enemy's heads in or just steal their cows. Earth corresponds to autumn, when it's time to put down your weapons and pick up your sickles for the harvest. Dark is the harsh part of winter, when there are too many blizzards to do much of anything. Storm is an unpredictable season corresponding to late winter or early spring: it may be warm enough to go raiding, but then again, a freak storm could break out and ruin your day.
* The "incident" of ''VideoGame/TouhouTenkuushouHiddenStarInFourSeasons'' is that the seasons have gone haywire, all four happening simultaneously in different parts of Gensokyo.
* In ''Seasons After Fall'', each season has a guardian resembling enormous animals associated with that season (bear for winter, eel for spring, cicada for summer and crane for fall), though the Winter Guardian implies that it used to be fewer. [[spoiler:In the end, the Seed that guided you in the first part of the game becomes guardian for the fifth season, presumably one after fall.]]

* Literature/{{Discworld}} has the normal 4 seasons, but a Disc year is 800 days long so the season cycle happens twice over. Because the books still treat 'a year' as being similar in length to a normal Earth one, this was retconned as saying that only wizards and learned people use the 'true' year and most people consider a single cycle of seasons (400 days, close to our 365) to be a year.
* In ''Literature/ASongOfIceAndFire'', what are called seasons on Westeros last a variable number of years at a time (there is no indication that this extends to any other continents, although Essos may be slightly affected), especially summer (during which you'll have patches of "normal", seasonal-like summer and winter spells) and winter (ditto). In short, "summer" and "winter" may better be described as very quickly cycling "interglacial" and "glacial" periods, rather than "seasons". Which means parts of the place can swing from being quite wonderful, thanks... [[HostileWeather to heavy drought, then to beyond damp to frozen solid and buried in many, many feet of snow, followed by waist-deep in mud, either baked solid again or frozen... again]]. With spells of okay in-between each phase. To only repeat the process sporadically. Due to this inconsistency, determining when the actual winter has started takes concerted effort by maesters across all of Westeros collecting meteorological data, and receives an official announcement in the form of their Citadel sending white ravens to the rookeries of every castle. The beginning of the series is the end of one of the longest summers in recent memory, which people say means winter will be even longer. Needless to say, [[AStormIsComing winter is coming.]] Unsurprisingly, setting aside and storing food grown during the "quite wonderful, thanks" sections is a bit of a continental habit.
** Spin-off material hints that this is in part due to magic. The first of the ''Tales of Dunk & Egg'' has Dunk's mentor claim that the seasons have gotten longer ever since the last dragon died a few decades before the story began. Whether this is true or not isn't clear.
* In ''Literature/TheSorcerersReceptionist'', kingdoms in a certain region have three seasons, due to [[AnthropomorphicPersonification Element]] shenanigans a long time ago. Winter is called the Season of Distant Skies, when everything is snowy. Then there's the calm, refreshing Season of Light, which lasts about half the year. Then things get warmer and the Season of Flowers, associated with romance and new life, bursts everything into bloom in time for the cycle to start again. Contrary to what you might expect, the Season of Flowers is the ''most'' dangerous because [[spoiler:Ice, the demon-fighter of the pantheon, is weakest then]], and demons are just as inflamed by it as humans. A lot of industries have to work harder during that time.
* The ''Literature/HonorHarrington'' series of books occasionally go into detail on the weather of various planets, since none of them have the ''exact'' same length of years or seasons as Earth does. Honor's homeworld of Sphinx has 15 months, with the seasons being four or five months long, with some noteworthy climate extremes. Many of the buildings have solid walls and very tall, steep roofs to keep the tremendous amounts of snow from piling up and ''crushing'' the buildings.

* In ''Webcomic/OffWhite'', the winter has lasted for over three centuries for some unexplained reason.

* ''VideoGame/TheLegendOfZeldaOracleOfSeasons'': The land of Holodrum's seasons are mixed up due to General Onox's meddling, resulting in a patchwork of summer heat, fall colors, wintry chill and lush spring growth rubbing shoulders across the land. Link can also change the seasons at will with the aid of the Rod of Seasons.

* There are plenty of jokes about the weather in one's home region (or sometimes another place that the speaker doesn't like) falling into a set of less-than-pleasant esoteric seasons. Seasons like Rain, Fucking Hot, and Road Construction. All any of this actually proves however, is that humans universally like complaining about the weather.

* In ''LightNovel/TheSorcerersReceptionist'', kingdoms in a certain region have three seasons, due to [[AnthropomorphicPersonification Element]] shenanigans a long time ago. Winter is called the Season of Distant Skies, when everything is snowy. Then there's the calm, refreshing Season of Light, which lasts about half the year. Then things get warmer and the Season of Flowers, associated with romance and new life, bursts everything into bloom in time for the cycle to start again. Contrary to what you might expect, the Season of Flowers is the ''most'' dangerous because [[spoiler:Ice, the demon-fighter of the pantheon, is weakest then]], and demons are just as inflamed by it as humans. A lot of industries have to work harder during that time.

[[folder:Web Comics]]

*** The textbooks and Wiki/TheOtherWiki claims Georgia has moderate weather. They're wrong. Every day is a mystery about the weather. One day you can see people walking their dogs while wearing shorts and t-shirts. The next they're completely covered, in jeans, a hoodie or heavy jacket, and glaring at everyone they pass by.

*** Houston treats August as a separate season. It's summer [[UpToEleven on steroids]]. Winter often tends to get skipped as well, with fall going straight into spring - and then there are other years where it's freezing cold for three months like a "normal" winter, but should even the slightest hint of snow develop, it's a major news event and ''nobody'' will be on the roads (despite the fact that Houston DrivesLikeCrazy the rest of the time).

** The Mimir.net ''TabletopGame/{{Planescape}}'' fan expansion, [[http://mimir.net/outlands/calendar.shtml describes the seasons of the Outlands,]] which are almost nothing like the seasons of the Primes. Instead, they reflect the movement of the "planar winds" bringing weather from the Outer Planes. "Summer" is when pleasant weather comes from the Upper Planes, "Winter" when bad weather comes from the Lower ones, "Spring" is Lawful, with gradually improving weather as the wind moves from Lower to Upper, and "Autumn" is Chaotic and shifts the other way. Each season has four months, in each of which the weather reflects one particular plane.

* The ''TabletopGame/RuneQuest'' world of Glorantha has five eight-week seasons, corresponding to its five elements: spring-like Sea Season (Water), summer-like Fire Season, autumn-like Earth Season, winter-like Dark Season (Darkness), and turbulent Storm Season (Air). There's also two weeks of Sacred Time between Storm and Sea, spent in performing death and rebirth rituals and seeking oracles of the year to come.
* In ''[[TabletopGame/ProseDescriptiveQualities Swashbucklers of the Seven Skies]]'', floating islands experience six seasons over the course of a 360 day year, as each of six skies passes overhead: The Mists are warm and foggy, The Jungle Sky is even warmer and filled with floating trees, The Sky of Thunder is full of rain and lightning, the Sky of Stones marks early autumn, the eerie and colder Ghost Sky marks late autumn, and the Sky of Frost is icy and nearly impassible. (The seventh sky, the Sky of Fire, sits at the central axis of the world dome and fries anyone who tries to enter.) Ships travelling far can cross into a sky earlier or later, and ships bear the brunt of each sky's weather, notably stones, lighting, and trees.
* A number of planets in ''TabletopGame/Warhammer40000'', but Fenris, home of the Space Wolves takes the crowner: Half a Fenrisian year is spent in bitter cold, with the oceans frozen to ice and snow over all the few landmasses. The other half is spent in a blazing summer with the oceans raging and constant seismic upheaval (as the ocean swallows the existing land, new islands are formed by constant volcanic eruptions). Only Asaheim, the northern continent and home to the Space Wolves chapter remains stable......oh, and did we mention a Fenrisian year is about ten earth years?
* Because of the surreal nature of ''TabletopGame/InvisibleSun'''s Actuality, seasons may pass normally in one place, pass in a different order, or even be skipped altogether. This doesn't just hold for the different Suns; because of the bizarre way things work under the Invisible Sun, it can even scale down being different seasons between different districts within the same place. In Satyrine, the magic-centered district of Fartown is permanently locked into autumn, even while the seasons pass normally in the rest of the city.