"Time lapse footage taken by Oregon State University alum Don Pettit during his time on the International Space Station. This one shows Earth from day to night. Watch the other eight time lapse videos from space http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list... science"
Defining normal
Gardeners, meteorologists, businesses, weather junkies and others will get answers to some of these questions in July, when NOAA's National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) releases the latest version of an official weather product called the U.S. Climate Normals.
Updated each decade, the U.S. Climate Normals are 30-year averages of many pieces of weather information collected from thousands of weather stations nationwide. Each time they are updated, an old decade is dropped, and a new one added. Starting in July, when you hear that a day was hotter, or colder, or rainier than normal, that "normal" will be a little different from what it was in the past.