NOAA’s new U.S. Climate Normals give the public, weather forecasters, and businesses a standard way to compare today’s conditions to 30-year averages. Temperature and precipitation averages and statistics are calculated every decade so we can put today’s weather into proper context and make better climate-related decisions.

Normals may be familiar to most Americans by their inclusion in local daily weather information from television, radio, print, and digital media. Not only do Normals indicate how conditions measure up for the nation as a whole, but also for specific locations—from Bangor, Maine, to San Diego, California. And, from Nome, Alaska, to San Juan, Puerto Rico.

U.S. Climate Normals are designed—and best-suited for—better understanding what is happening today. Rather than assess long-term climate trends, Normals reflect the impacts of the changing climate on our day-to-day weather experience. Normals are not merely averages of raw data. Thirty years of U.S. weather station observations are compiled, checked for quality, compared to surrounding stations, filled in for missing periods, and used to calculate not only averages, but many other measures. These then provide a basis for comparisons of temperature, precipitation, and other variables to today’s observations.

Click here and follow the menu's to see Erie's new climate data.