Is this a “normal” weather week?

Look outside your window or step outside for a few moments. What is today’s weather? Is the temperature what you would expect for this time of year? You can investigate your local climate to find out if this week’s average temperature is normal.

What To Do:

1) Start this activity on a Monday. Find yesterday’s (Sunday’s) average temperature by looking in your local newspaper. You can also find it here by clicking on your state, finding your city and clicking on ‘yesterday’ at the top of the forecast (add yesterday’s actual high and low temperatures together and divide by 2 to get the average temperature for the day).

2) Do this every day for one week. At the end of the week, add the daily averages together and divide by 7 to get the weekly average.

3) Click on this map, which shows last week’s average temperature across the United States, and find your location. Compare last week’s average temperature that you calculated to the official one displayed on the map. Is it higher, lower or the same? Why might that be?

4) Then, look at this map, which shows whether or not last week’s average temperatures were higher, lower or the same as normal across the country. Find your location on the map and determine its color. Look at the color key to see whether your area was warmer, cooler or the same as normal.

What’s Going On?

Climate tells us the average weather over a period of time for a specific location, and what weather we can expect for a certain time and place. Daily weather events like temperature and rainfall, as well as seasonal changes, are considered when scientists study climate. Scientists have measured air temperature in specific locations for 30 years or more and have calculated averages to find out what the “normal” temperatures are for those locations.

Check out maps of average temperature and average precipitation over the course of one year around the world.

This activity is adapted from Tracking Temperature: Is This a Normal Week? by Journey North.

Image courtesy of National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center.