Indian Summer

While on our way the mall, I noticed that the weather was warm this day, while it was very cold on the previous days. My husband told me that it is called "Indian Summer". I was asking back, "what does it mean?"

Indian Summer is a name given to a period of sunny, warm weather in autumn, not long before winter. It is a period of mild weather occurring in late autumn, following a seasonable cold spell. For example, we had two whole days of Indian summer this year, and then it turned cold again.

An early American writer described Indian Summer well when he wrote, "The air is perfectly quiescent and all is stillness, as if Nature, after her exertions during the Summer, were now at rest." This passage belongs to the writer John Bradbury and was written nearly an "eternity" ago, back in 1817. But this passage is as relevant today as it was way back then. The term "Indian Summer" dates back to the 18th century in the United States. It can be defined as "any spell of warm, quiet, hazy weather that may occur in October or even early November." Basically, autumn is a transition season as the thunderstorms and severe weather of the summer give way to a tamer, calmer weather period before the turbulence of the winter commences.