Every ten minutes on the 1s (:01, :11, : 21, etc.), you can watch Spectrum News 1 for a check of the forecast. 

You can get the highs and lows for the day, rain chances, wind, and other details including the 7-day forecast.  

Simply put, you’ll get your WEATHER information. 

However, if you want to know the CLIMATE for your region, you’ll need to look beyond the 7-day.

What You Need To Know

  • Weather and climate are not the same

  • Weather is day-to-day, while climate refers to what the weather is like in an area over a long period of time.

The American Meteorological Society Glossary says weather “consists of the short-term (minutes to days) variations in the atmosphere.”   

So, you decide what to wear each day based on those short-term variations.  

Climate, on the other hand, determines what types of clothing you need to have in your closet because of how the weather tends to behave over time. 

 

 

Climate describes the long term pattern of weather for an area.

You can’t determine an area’s climate by looking at today’s weather or by analyzing the last two weeks.  You need to look at over 30 years of data to get the average pattern of weather for a particular region, and the further you look back gives more details about if the climate has or is changing.

Kentucky averages a little more than 45” of rainfall a year and has a humid subtropical climate with cold to mild winters and generally hot summers. 

According to Climate Central, Louisville’s average summer temperature has warmed up over the past 50 years by nearly 3 degrees.

 

 

So, remember that weather is day-to-day, while climate is long term.

 

Other ways to look at weather vs. climate:

  • Weather is your mood. Climate is your personality.
  • Weather is a soloist.  Climate is the choir singing in harmony.
  • “Climate is what we expect, weather is what we get.”  -Robert Heinlein