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While climate and weather both refer to weather phenomena in the Earth’s atmosphere, their meanings are distinctly different. Weather is what is happening at a given moment in time, while climate is referring to an average over 30 years.

The climate of a region can be vastly different from what weather they are experiencing at any given time. For example, in January of 2024 snow flurries were reported in Pensacola, despite their average temperature in January staying between roughly 50°- 60° F. The weather occurring in Florida is the snowfall in January. The climate in Florida is the average temperature of 50° - 60°F.

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However, as we have seen, the climate can change. This is because (as mentioned above) that climate is the average over 30 years. So if a city’s high temperature in January from 1980-2010 was an average of 60°, but from 1990-2020 that same location was 62° then that shows there was a warming trend climatologically speaking. This doesn’t mean they didn’t experience extremely cold weather days, this just means that as an average over 30 years there was a 2° warmup.

So while the weather you experience on any given day may change drastically from one day to the next, the climate of a location is what you should typically experience under “normal” circumstances.

J​ennifer Gray is a weather and climate writer for weather.com. She has been covering some of the world's biggest weather and climate stories for the last two decades.