NOAA's odd way of presenting February temperatures

Confirming Albany, NY as a 4 degree (F) departure below the “normal” temperatures provided on Accuweather for February.

The only thing the federal mafia knows how to do is lie. Believing anything the government says is a fool’s errand.

maybe someone has said this but I’ll say it again. How does the temp.
know where the state bounders are? If a person wanted to make a map
with cred. the colored areas would look like blobs, ovals, funny shapes <?"?…..

Since we all know that the surface temperature record is ‘adjusted’ a rather simple, but tedious and informative check is the local newspapers and their archives. Usually these temperatures are from the local met office well before the data is ‘manipulated’. Yes, it’s time consuming but telling.

I posted on weatherbell.com on this matter last night and may reprise it in my patriot post blog this week ( minus my snide comments ) for the good of the general public.

@Joe Kirklin Bastardi,
If am not mistaken, the Winter of 1961-62 (Northern Hemisphere) was the coldest winter on a global scale for the 20th Century. And I think the winters of 46-47 and 41-42 were also in the top 10 for the Century.
My personal memory can still recall the bitter winters of 75-76 and 77-78. The winter of 75-76 was especially cold, as the frigid temps arrived in late November. However, I can never recall this can of cold lasting past mid Feb. Normally, even after a bitter late Dec through mid Jan, a 2-3 week thaw sets in through most of the country.
Finally, I also remember the drought/heatwaves of the mid to late 1970s. The summer of 77 was especially nasty. I was spending it with my sister in Boston, and I can still remember the heat induced black-outs up and down the East Coast.

@Leopold Danze Gieger,
But, NOAA and NASA use means from the late 20th Century. What Tamino admits to is a moving of goal posts. Many years ago I advocated using a 100 year mean instead of the 30 year mean that is so popular. You cannot have it both ways. Well, actually, the Alarmists do.

Theo Goodwin
March 19, 2014 at 7:48 am
When you are criticizing someone, technical details matter. NOAA has a defined methodology that they use in constructing these maps, and have used several years. Are you suggesting that they should have changed their methodology just because you think the US had a cold winter? If not, if their defined and pre-existing methodology classifies a temperature as “Near normal” or “Near average” (although the term “near median” would be better), then that is how they should portray it on the map.
Turning to your specific example, south West Virginia is split among three divisions, South Western, Central, and Southern. Central extends south almost to the south border of West Virginia, but also north to the Northern Border. They had rankings of 35, 43, and 51 respectively. Had the central division been three rankings lower, it would have been classified as “below normal”, while the southern division was below median but definitely near to it.
Switching to anomalies with respect to 1901-2000 (the anomaly interval used on the map), the divisions had anomalies of, respectively, -2.0 F, -1.4 F, and -0.4 F. That certainly seems consistent with the classification. The anomaly with respect to the current “climate normal” (1981-2010), ie, the 30 year period used for baselines as per WMO recommendations, are -3.1 F, -2.8 F, and -1.6 F.
For the southern division, that compares to anomalies compared to the current climate normal of plus 7.0 F in 1927 (rank 120), and -11.8 in 1895 (rank 1), making it far closer to the warmest February than to the coolest. As recently as 1978 the February average has been -11.6 F (rank 2), and as recently as 2007, it has been -8.0 F (rank 13), so you don’t even have the XKCD excuse.

Some people have complained about the relative obscurity of the light blue “below normal” areas on the map. That obscurity is likely a function of the monitor they use. On my monitor, colours near that colour tend to be washed out to white when viewed directly, but are very clear when viewed at an indirect angle. I do not know how wide spread that feature is. If it is, NOAA should not use that colour in graphics. However, it is an oddity of my current monitor in my experience, so not something you would automatically think of. (I did not notice it until I discovered error margins often printed in that colour, and became puzzled as to which error margins people were referring to.) If you are experiencing that problem, I certainly recommend contacting NOAA to let them know about the problem – but I doubt anything can be read into their not having noticed so obscure an issue.

jim, I took the colour blindness test you linked to. The result: “normal answers: 31/31”. So, I would hazard a guess that just as in my youth, I am not colour blind.
The feature that I described is a real fact about my monitor. The colour shown depends on the angle of viewing, which results in light blue colours becoming washed out, or disappearing when viewed directly rather than obliquely. Consequently, the light blue “below normal” areas on the map are very faint, or invisible (depending on the version of the map) when I look at the monitor directly. That is not a result of colour blindness, and it is arrogant of you to assume so.
It is even more arrogant of you to assume that the choice of colour was “artfull” and done with intent to “deceive/mislead”. It is also downright obnoxious.
As to my own supposed arrogance. I described a problem with my monitor, and suggested it might be more widespread but specifically disavowed knowledge of how wide spread the problem is. I’m happy to concede that for some people the problem may be colour blindness, and that NOAA should provide versions of their maps easily readable by colour blind people. Of course, they have done so in the map that actually lists rankings by division.