I can't answer your question since I'm not in the south, quite the opposite
But, "hard" and "soft" dormant are not official or formal AHS, horticultural or botanical terms and so different people understand them by different meanings. Munson used "soft" dormant to mean a daylily that "rested" for a month or less, a "hard" dormant taking longer. Some people may equate hard and soft with hardiness or not, some think of "hard" dormants as those needing a chilling period, some think of a "hard" dormant as one that dies back early before frosts, and so on and so on.