Chris Daly
Appearances
Short Wave
Nature Quest: Are Flowers Blooming Early?
The idea is for the map to show the coldest minimum temperature, nighttime temperature that you might expect to get each year averaged over a period of years. So it's like on average, how cold is that coldest night of the year?
Short Wave
Nature Quest: Are Flowers Blooming Early?
When you're listening to a weather forecast and they say temperatures are going to be above normal tomorrow, what does that mean? So it's not normal, it's not just a number or just something they're pulling out of their hat. It's actually a specific statistic that we use.
Short Wave
Nature Quest: Are Flowers Blooming Early?
A map across the country is made up of little pixels, a grid of pixels, and each pixel is about 800 meters, about half a mile on the side. It's pretty small. So we have something like 80 some odd million pixels across the country that we're mapping every day.
Short Wave
Nature Quest: Are Flowers Blooming Early?
So a climate normal, you can consider that as being kind of like your baseline average temperature precipitation. And so they're averages. And then we average those over a 30-year period. So they're averages of averages. And so they're pretty stable.