Actually, "normal" is an international standard weather term meaning the average of the past three decades, recalculated every ten years (see here, for example.) So it's more precise than "average," because if you take the meaning of that as "average of all years for which we have measurements" then it's both potentially comparing apples to oranges with different locations, and given climate trends wouldn't be as useful in a weather report.
(Sure, that should be explained more often, but it's not exactly something that's worth mentioning in every newscast.)
I hadn't realized it was a meteorological "term of art"; I kept thinking "normal" should be a range a couple of sigmas across. Hmm. (Though I still keep wondering what the statistically-speaking-normal range is when they show me that weather-speech-normal/30-year-average.)
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(Sure, that should be explained more often, but it's not exactly something that's worth mentioning in every newscast.)
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