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Comment by wongarsu | Hacker News Reader

Looking back at the amount of snowfall I saw as a kid and the amount of snowfall I see now in my 30s, or at the number of hot summer days ... I find it hard to claim that climate is not changing over a lifetime. 20 years isn't even a lifetime, that's like 1/4th of a lifetime

Maybe climate is more stable wherever you live

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There's a problem with memories. You can have a snowy week and remember it as the entire winter, if it affected you in particularly memorable ways. Kids usually get out of school and play building snowmen and having snowball fights.

When I was a kid in the midwest USA, 100 degrees in the summer happened every once in a while. Still does. July and August were always hot. Still are. As a kid the heat didn't bother me so much, I'd go out and play in the sprinkler or go to the pool. Now, I've got to wear clothes and work. Makes the heat more noticable.

But we have undeniable evidence that the number of record highs to record lows has been increasing dramatically over the past few decades. It's just measurement, there's no magic behind it.

Summers are actually hotter and winters are actually warmer on average, that's real.

Likewise in the winter, as a kid in the 90s I remember my dad wondering if we'd have a white Christmas (wondering if snow would fall before Christmas or not). There's even songs from decades earlier about it.

Whether we'd get snow before January has always been a toss-up, and I'd hazard we've gotten it more often recently than when I was a kid. Like about 10 years ago I even remember a huge blizzard in November.

Same as my childhood in the 1970s.

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