With another decade complete, the National Weather Service has updated the climate averages, which include daily high and low temperatures, and what we’re all interested in here, daily and seasonal snowfall. Because of international agreement, these averages use 30 years of data, the 3 most recently completed decades. Since the beginning of our Golden Snowball website, we have been using the averages from 1971-2000. However, soon we will be using the “new” averages, which are from 1981-2010. I’ll have to look into the “true” ending for snowfall when I get a chance as the snowfall season goes from July-June, which is different than basically every other stat. My guess is when they compute the snowfall averages, they use the snowfall for each year (1990), rather than each season (July 1990-June 1991).
I figured I’d take a look at the “old” averages and compare them with the “new” ones.
| City | 1971-2000 | 1981-2010 |
|---|---|---|
| Albany | 62.6 | 59.1 |
| Binghamton | 81 | 83.4 |
| Buffalo | 97 | 94.7 |
| Rochester | 100.3 | 99.5 |
| Syracuse | 121.1 | 123.8 |
Of the 5 GSB cities, only Binghamton and Syracuse’s averages have gone up. Syracuse is now the only city with an average of 100 or more, as Rochester falls a half an inch short at 99.5. The biggest difference between the averages is Albany’s, a decrease in 3.5 inches.
You may have noticed that I keep calling these averages, while most other people call them normals. That is because I generally try to avoid using “normal” when talking about statistics like these. To me, “normal” gives the false impression that the average is what you should expect, what “normally” happens. As any of the long time residents in the GSB cities know, the only thing normal about our winters is their abnormality.
Great post and info Stephen. When you mentioned something about working on averages I was hoping this is what it was 🙂 I wish they would go on a 30 year but rolling each year instead of 10 years 😉
I’ll get the new totals in a little later when I update the stats. Been moving and updating the GSG site all weekend 🙁
You know, we could probably do that rolling average thing ourselves. I have all the stats from 1950 to last season on an excel file, so it wouldn’t take too long to get new averages for the 5 GSB cities each season.
Actually, that’s a very good view on the difference between “average” and “normal” and we were taught the same differentiation in college – average is the math, normal is what people are used to and expect.
Indeed, which is why it kinda bothers me that NWS uses “normal” for the average. It’d be on thing if the “normal” was most often, or the average of the most often totals, or if they averaged it removing outliers and such. But as far as I can tell, it’s not that case at all.
Even worse: “normal” temperatures, which are smoothed a bit, so it’s not even a pure average. It’s just there. I get why they do it that way, but it seems like a better word is out there than “normal” for these things. Average probably only works for precipitation, while temperatures need something else entirely.