To the editor:

May has been almost twice as rainy as normal, this newspaper reported on May 30. That “normal” number is exactly the average, and using a different name for it serves no useful purpose and can be misleading, because something can differ to some extent from the exact average without being abnormal. I don’t blame your reporter, because the misleading terminology started long ago in the agency that was named U.S. Weather Bureau at the time. They calculated the average, usually 30-year average, and labeled it the “normal” in their reports. That misleading label has been repeated so many times for so many years that now it probably seems like normal usage to most people, but it still is misleading.

Paul Jordan,

Lawrence