We’ve all been adjusting to “new normals” for over a year, but now weather professionals are adjusting to the climate’s new definition of normal. 

Earlier this week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration released its new climatological report for the United States that covers a 30-year period from 1991 to 2020. The data is updated every 10 year and replaces the previous normals recorded from 1981 to 2010.

The overall trend shows that Denver and Colorado overall experienced an increase in warming and less annual precipitation and snowfall, which was to no one’s surprise.

For instance Stapleton International Airport — NOAA’s official weather tracking center in Denver until 2006 — showed a 2.9-degree increase over the last decade.

“If you were looking at a daily temperature average you can beat it by 10, maybe 20 degrees, but the more data points you’re taking the harder it is to have those big changes,” said Becky Bolinger, Colorado’s assistant state climatologist. “So a three-degree change in an entire monthly average temperature in a 10-year time period is pretty significant.”

Nationally, every area except the upper Midwest in states such as Minnesota and the Dakotas experienced warming.

Michael Palecki, a physical scientist and normals project manager for the National Centers for Environmental Information, a subdivision of NOAA, says the calculations began in the 1950s and were intended to give weather experts an average that represents any recent changes in climate. 

However, during this 30-year period, the official weather tracking center shifted to Denver International Airport, which has repercussions and makes the official snowfall averages less clear, officials said.

“For a major metropolitan area you want to have that one consistent record and Stapleton was our main record (keeper) until DIA opened, but they didn’t start taking the snowfall calculations until 2006, so when you’re looking at DIA it’s hard to say if it should be the representative number for a city,” Bollinger said. 

For example, Stapleton’s complete 30-year set shows that March continues to be the snowiest month with 8.8 inches in the Mile High City, but in DIA’s 15-year set, the snowiest month is December with 10.5 inches of snow.

March is listed as the third-snowiest month in DIA’s data set.

Because of the incomplete data set, experts at the National Weather Service in Boulder and Bollinger’s office refer to Stapleton’s numbers.

However, despite DIA not having a complete data set, Paul Schlatter, a meteorologist with the NWS Boulder, says its numbers follow the other’s trends.

“We’re not trusting for what came out for DIA specifically because it’s too short of a record, but in the long-term when you look at all the sites that have a good 30-year snowfall December and February is absolutely increasing,” Schlatter said. 

Overall, snowfall for Stapleton’s report dipped from 53.8 inches annually to 49 inches, while DIA’s accounted for 49.4 inches of snow annually since 2006. Despite these numbers, each official expects March to reclaim its title as the snowiest month in 2031 when the next data set is released.

Even though a majority of the state saw a decrease in snowfall, Boulder, Burlington and Montrose saw slight increases, while Steamboat Springs drastically increased its annual snowfall amount by nearly 5 inches to bring its annual total to 184.5 inches.

In terms of precipitation, Denver decreased .22 of an inch over the past decade, but Alamosa, Boulder, Steamboat Springs and Walsh slightly increased. However, Burlington saw the biggest change with an increase of 1.6 inches.

“The reduction in precipitation was more severe in the southwest and western part of the state, but there were some drying in the eastern side of the Rocky Mountains,” Palecki said.

Each of the three weather experts said this latest data set — full or not — give people a better glimpse at how the climate is actively changing.

However, it’s still not indicating the true nature of the planet’s warming, but is getting better, and people should notice the difference, said Schlatter.

“Because the averages over the 30 years are increasing because of climate change, we’re actually washing out how warm it really is,” Schlatter said. “But now that the normals are catching up with what the climate is actually doing, so will people notice a change every day? Probably not, but they’ll notice several changes over the course of the year.”