Originally published at: The NOAA has officially changed the definition of "normal" weather | Boing Boing
…
8 Likes
At this point, I can’t tell if this is the frog in the pot of water slowly brought to a boil
OR
14 Likes
I think its a frog, in a pot of water, slowly brought to boil, by a raging house fire.
15 Likes
I miss snow. 
10 Likes
Started by people who drove in their hummers to a gender reveal ceremony in a post-clearcut monoculture forest.
13 Likes
Watch conservatives attempt to say this weather has been normal like this for decades and that this is a long overdue course correction. Like 121 degree weather in British Columbia has always been that way.
18 Likes
This can easily be applied to about anything nowadays.
3 Likes
2 Likes
Related:
6 Likes
Whenever I hear or read “new normal,” my mind translates it to “current crapcake.” 
22 Likes
I should start a company…
“Carboniferous R Us”, We’ll sell cycads, horsetails, ferns, and some conifers.
They’ll probably be popular in areas that don’t turn into desert…
5 Likes
The USDA plant zone map hasn’t been updated since 2012 it seems and, as I recall, that last update was controversial because it didn’t take climate change fully into account.
7 Likes
So, the silver lining is that I can put that fig tree in the ground…
(</s> although suspect it’s true)
3 Likes
So, the weather goalposts have been moved. Reminds me of the discussions way back within the psychiatric community over the term “neurotic”. The psychology department crowd at school (in explaining it to me in laymen’s terms) described how a subject’s neurotic behavior could be based solely on having a certain relatively ‘benign’ personality type, one not due to some mental illness, and — given the commonality of certain personality types — be the norm within the general public. One associate prof at school joked then that neurotic behaviors of one sort or another are so pervasive, that he wondered if the term “neurotic” was worthy of being described when making any diagnosis, any more than having blue eyes instead of brown was an issue.
1 Like
We’ve always been at war with Eastasia.
3 Likes
Headline:
The NOAA has officially changed the definition of “normal” weather
No, they haven’t. NOAA Climate Normals are the same as they’ve always been: rolling thirty-year averages of various weather data, with a new data set issued every 10 years.
Every ten years is “semi-regular”? 'mmkay.
Every 10 years, not every 30. It’s a rolling 30-year average, but new 30-yr averages are calculated every 10 years. Regularly. 
But it’s the data that’s updated, not the definition. No one is moving any goalposts.
The data and resulting charts provide vivid illustations of the changes in climate over time - but the “Climate Normal” for a location is, by definition, the average ot the most recent 30-yr. data set.
Climate is changing, so Climate Normals are changing.
And that’s normal. 
4 Likes
Seriously, here in the Shenandoah Valley, I can grow figs and some citrus outdoors, in the ground. It is crazy, and terrifying, but also, looking at the map, we are relatively OK compared to the vast majority of the country (and the world), so I guess we’ve got that going for us…
6 Likes
I wasn’t joking by the way
5 Likes
