What’s the Difference Between Weather and Climate — Really?

If you’ve ever learned the difference between weather and climate, you probably learned some version of this:

Weather is what happens day to day. Climate is the average weather of a place over a long period of time.

That’s true.

But it doesn’t tell you very much about what climate actually means for your life.

Climate is more than an average. It is a pattern—and once you learn how to recognize that pattern, you can begin to understand why places around the world look, feel, and function so differently.