What is a "water year"?
In Canada, many people celebrate the New Year on January 1 with champagne and confetti, but hydrologists celebrate a bit earlier! For hydrologists, the New Year begins on October 1 and ends on September 30 of the next year. The hydrologists' New Year is also known as the "water year." In the same way a fiscal year is different from a calendar year, a water year is offset from a calendar year and has a deep-seated scientific purpose.
