I am interested in which year has the best representation of average weather across a large area, the contiguous USA. This is challenging since what was average in the Midwest might have been unusual in the Southeast at that time. Still I think there is a year that is closest to 'normal' for the largest portion of the USA compared to other years.
Am I wrong to think one year could represent an average for such a large area? If needing to pick a year most representative across the contiguous USA, how would one identify the best year, say from 1990-2020? Is there an easy place to lookup this kind of climate information, or what calculations would need to be done?