The buds of spring may have already broken free from the soil but the season officially starts today!

You may be thinking that spring doesn't start until later in March and you wouldn't be wrong thinking this. There are two separate dates which can be used to define the start of the season.

Astronomically, the start of spring takes place on the spring equinox, when the length of day and night are the same in all parts of the world. It is defined by the Earth's axis and orbit around the Sun and the exact date varies slightly each year.

Meteorologically speaking in the Northern Hemisphere however, spring beings on March 1st. It is a fixed date because it is statistically easier to process the data by taking four equal quarters for each of the four seasons.

The meteorological spring is made up of March, April and May, while meteorological winter, as we've just had, was December, January and February.

While the days are really getting hotter and longer for us, the opposite is true for those in the Southern Hemisphere. For them, today marks the start of the meteorological autumn.