mud season
noun
plural mud seasons
: a time of year (such as early spring) that is characterized by excessively muddy ground
For Colorado hikers, trail runners and mountain bikers, spring is mud season. Warm sunny periods punctuated by heavy spring snowstorms turn trails in and near the foothills into muddy messes …—
John Meyer
John Meyer… each mud season a spring pushes up through the concrete, first dribbling, then gushing icy water from the depths of the earth into our cellar.—Jules Older
Jules Older… one of the worst (and most widespread) mud seasons in years, closing a number of central Vermont back roads and isolating a number of us at home.—Rutland (Vermont) Herald
Rutland (Vermont) HeraldExamples of mud season in a Sentence
Recent Examples on the Web
May: Santa Fe National Forest, New Mexico Trade mud season—that yucky, transitional time between winter and spring when snow, rain, and melt create wet (and muddy) conditions—for drier trails in New Mexico this spring.
—Erica Zazo, Outside Online, 9 Jan. 2025
Late April through May is aptly named mud season, as the winter snowpack melts and the frozen trails thaw into a sloppy mess.
—Jen Murphy, Travel + Leisure, 5 Sep. 2024
That’s why this two-ish-month springtime period is called: mud season.
—Chadner Navarro, Condé Nast Traveler, 8 May 2024
The mountain had got a couple of feet of fresh snow the previous week, but now winter was in swift retreat and mud season was nigh.
—Nick Paumgarten, The New Yorker, 9 Apr. 2024
Beverly Wight Smith has seen a lifetime of Maine mud seasons in this former farming town.
—Ashley Milne-Tyte, The Christian Science Monitor, 26 Mar. 2024
Besides spring, summer, fall, and winter, there is mud season, when Vermont’s 8,000 miles of unpaved roads turn to mush as winter turns to spring, and stick season, when the trees are bare, the white birches breathtaking in their nakedness as fall slides silently into winter.
—Kevin Cullen, BostonGlobe.com, 1 June 2023
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Erica Zazo, Outside Online, 9 Jan. 2025
Late April through May is aptly named mud season, as the winter snowpack melts and the frozen trails thaw into a sloppy mess.
—Jen Murphy, Travel + Leisure, 5 Sep. 2024
That’s why this two-ish-month springtime period is called: mud season.
—Chadner Navarro, Condé Nast Traveler, 8 May 2024
The mountain had got a couple of feet of fresh snow the previous week, but now winter was in swift retreat and mud season was nigh.
—Nick Paumgarten, The New Yorker, 9 Apr. 2024
Beverly Wight Smith has seen a lifetime of Maine mud seasons in this former farming town.
—Ashley Milne-Tyte, The Christian Science Monitor, 26 Mar. 2024
Besides spring, summer, fall, and winter, there is mud season, when Vermont’s 8,000 miles of unpaved roads turn to mush as winter turns to spring, and stick season, when the trees are bare, the white birches breathtaking in their nakedness as fall slides silently into winter.
—Kevin Cullen, BostonGlobe.com, 1 June 2023
Cite this Entry
“Mud season.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/mud%20season. Accessed 31 Oct. 2025.
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