Last week, I was halfway to my car on the way to work, already running later than I’d intended, when I looked down at what I was wearing: a long-sleeved dress, appropriate for fall, and nautical flip-flops, which are decidedly not.

My confused fashion choices were not just a matter of hurriedness. It’s that I instinctively had no idea what season I was dressing for. Welcome to false fall, the 10th of Maryland’s mythical 12 seasons.

The wildly popular meme holds that the traditional summer, autumn, winter and spring do not accurately describe the unpredictable nature of our local weather. Instead, there are the in-betweeners, like “third winter,” “fool’s spring,” “the pollening” and “hell’s front porch.”

Early September here means we are all confounded, from birds to plants to sad middle-aged ladies making the wrong footwear choices, because it’s hard when you don’t know what to wear, eat or even what activities to plan for the weekend at any given time. If you’ve always assumed this wacky climate was some sort of cosmic conspiracy, guess what?

“This very cool, cloudy [end of] summer was a conspiracy of geography,” said Jeffrey Halverson, a meteorologist, professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County’s Department of Geography and Environmental Systems, and the severe storms expert for The Washington Post’s Capital Weather Gang.

I knew it! But I didn’t know the science behind it. Our region is in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and the Appalachian Mountains, which, Halverson explained, “exert a lot of control on certain types of air masses that tend to lock them into place.” While this makes sense to experts like him, our coolish August “took the average person by surprise.”

The culprits include the jet stream, a current 30,000 feet in the air. “Ripples and disturbances move through it, high- and low-pressure systems, with either storminess or fair weather. It’s been kind of abnormal for this time of year,” he said. ”We got stuck in a pattern for many weeks.”

The result is our current unpredictability, according to Brian LaSorsa, a meteorologist from the National Weather Service’s Baltimore/Washington office. “Sometimes you wake up in the morning and it’s 40 or 50 degrees, but by the afternoon it’s in the 80s,” he said. ”You’re in a sweater in the morning and in shorts in the evening.”

Which brings me back to my tragic fashion choices. I asked readers how they deal with the weirdness of weather in their own lives. “We must layer like a lasagna and hope for the best, while we snack on our soup poured over a corn cob, with just a pinch of Old Bay,” wrote Emily Li of Howard County.

Chantelle Washington of White Marsh also uses layers to combat the confusion. “Last week my outfit was a short-sleeved jumpsuit with a jeans jacket and slides (showing off the summer pedi),” she wrote. But her meal choices over the span of a few hours are still a little all over the place. ”I have indulged in a bowl of half & half [crab soup] from Michael’s Cafe for lunch. But also grabbed a strawberry smoothie from Wawa later in the day. A/C off windows and sliding doors opened.”

Samuel Percy-Smith of Odenton, who calls false fall his “favorite time of the year,” leans into the contradictions, enjoying his relatively mosquito-free hiking and camping. “My husband and I are out the door early, so I layer clothes. Tee shirt under a button up, sweater over that,” he wrote, adding that he also brings face wipes in case he overheats.

As for food, he likes a dry soup, such as udon or ramen, and grain or rice bowls, but he’s also still grilling meat and corn. “Granted I’ll grill until it’s freezing out,” he admitted.

Kisha Petticolas is also holding onto summer. “I’m still eating corn on the cob and wearing white!” the Cambridge resident wrote.

The interest in weather and how it affects our every day is such that Halverson is giving a lecture on hurricanes in a series called Profs and Pints at Guilford Hall Brewery later this month. He said he understands how unsettling it is to not know whether to reach for sandals or snowshoes.

“We’re in a tug of war. We always have been. There’s nothing broken about it,” Halverson said. “It’s just where we live.”