Index
- Alaska Climate Divisions FAQs
- Anomalies vs. Temperature
- Arctic Sea Ice Measurements
- Billion-Dollar Disasters: Calculating the Costs
- Binomial Filter
- Climate Division Dataset Transition
- Climate Extremes Index
- CLIMAT Messages
- Climatological Rankings
- Coral Reef Bleaching
- Dead Fuel Moisture
- Definition of Drought
- Drought Indicators
- Drought in the Colorado River Basin
- Drought vs. Aridity
- El Niño: A Historical Perspective
- Explanation of the 500 mb Flow
- Future Drought
- Global Precipitation Percentile Maps
- Global Regions Definitions
- Global Temperature Anomaly Percentile Maps
- Global Temperature Uncertainty
- Groundwater Drought Indicators
- Hawaiʻi Climate Divisions FAQs
- LOESS
- Measuring Drought
- Monthly Releases
- Monthly Report RSS Feed
- nClimDiv Maximum and Minimum Temperatures
- Palmer Drought Index
- Potential Evapotranspiration
- Reforestation of Bastrop Lost Pines
- Regional Climate Centers
- Regional Snowfall Index (RSI)
- Satellite-Based Drought Indicators
- Soil Moisture Water Balance Models
- Southern Hemisphere Snow Cover Extent
- Standardized Precipitation Index
- Streamflow Drought Indicators
- Subtropical Highs
- Tornado Count
- U.S. Climate Divisions
- U.S. Climate Normals
- U.S. Drought Monitor Scale
- USHCN Version 2.5 Transition
- Water Supply vs. Water Demand
U.S. Climate Normals

1981-2010 Normals: approximately 9800 stations across (a) the continental U.S. and Canada, (b) the Pacific Ocean, (c) Alaska, (d) Hawaii, and (e) the Caribbean Sea.
Climate Normals are three-decade averages of climatological variables. The most widely-used Normals are those for daily and monthly station-based temperature, precipitation, snowfall and heating and cooling degree days. These come from NOAA's Cooperative and First-Order station networks. Meteorologists and climatologists regularly use Normals for placing recent climate conditions into historical context; such as comparisons with the day's weather conditions on local television. Normals are also utilized in many applications across a variety of sectors. These include regulation of power companies, energy load forecasting, crop selection and planting times, construction planning, building design, and many others.
Several changes and additions were incorporated into the 1981-2010 Normals. Monthly temperature and precipitation Normals utilize underlying data values that have undergone additional quality control to account for things such as stations having been moved. Unlike the 1971-2000 Normals, daily (rather than monthly) data are used extensively in daily temperature Normals as well as heating and cooling degree day Normals, providing greater precision of intra-seasonal features. More details can be found in Arguez et al. 2011.
When the 1991-2020 Normals are released, relevant comparisons between the new version and previous versions will be highlighted. Observational evidence shows that the last 20 years have been the warmest such period on record across the U.S. Therefore, we anticipate that the new Normals will generally be warmer on average for most stations, but not uniformly warmer for all stations and all seasons. In fact, some station Normals in certain locations and seasons may become cooler.
Information on the current Normals, as well as the history of the Normals, please visit U.S. Climate Normals. For general questions about Normals or help accessing the 1971-2000 product, please contact NCEI.