What is average or normal weather?
So your are planning to visit the area and would like to know what kind of weather to expect. You have visited several times before and the weather was different on each occasion. Since the trip is still some weeks ahead you check the climate statistics for the area to see what is normal or average weather for the time you plan to visit. But what does normal or average mean?
For the answer, we have to look at the climate of a given area. Climate is what we expect and weather is what we get. Climate is the study of the weather data over a long period of time.
In the this area our weather records go back over 100 years. Dr. Marstellar began keeping weather records in 1913. So we have a long and continuous record of weather conditions in our area. Today the website www.weatherundergrounduniontownpa provides a good deal of current weather information for the local area. This includes temperature, wind, pressure and even radar data. Some additional data on the site comes from the airport in Morgantown, West Virginia.
In the old days, we were lucky to get one observation a day as the system was made up of volunteers who usually made the observation before going to work and perhaps another at day’s end. Today, it’s mostly electronic and the observations are continuous in nature. I was a volunteer weather observer at Chalk Hill for over 35 years, so we also have a good data base in the mountains to help with average and normals for the mountain area. There are numerous other volunteers who have contributed to the vast data base that is now available. My hero was the farmer from Kansas who observed the weather for 70 years and never missed a day. His motto was “Service is the rent we pay for the space we occupy in life.”
Average temperatures for the area for December are 43 degrees for the high and 26 degrees for the low. You visit the area on December 4, 1982, and its 77 degrees. Several years later on December 22, 1989, and it’s a bone chilling -14 degrees (and this is the actual air temperature.) Your first visit to the area was on December 4, 1974, and nearly 15 inches of snow fell. Average snowfall for the month is 7 inches. On two occasions, less than an inch was recorded for the entire month of December. All of these extremes go into the making of an average or normal, so be careful when you look at what is normal. There could be a 91 degree difference in possible temperatures on any given day in December in the our area.