January climate from the Twin Cities

Posted at 8:51 AM on February 1, 2008 by Craig Edwards (1 Comments)

The National Weather Service has posted the ranking of the snowfall and the moisture content measured at the Minneapolis/St. Paul International Airport during January 2008. Take a look at the departure from normal on the graphic following the numerical data.

Twin Cities and regional January precipitation ranking
CE

Comments (1)

Forgoing the "what does 'normal' mean" discussion, why are climate normals as used by the NWS calculated only every 10 years? One would think (okay, *I* think) that we should have enough computing power to get these things calculated every year. The 30-year interval is probably still good to cover any greater-than-annual fluctuations and capture any decadal-length trends.

But the question remains: Why do we have to wait for 10 years for updated climate "normals"?

Posted by Chris B. Critter | February 4, 2008 8:04 AM

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