You usually have to be obsessed with climate change (positive or negative) to really get a big picture grasp on how some things are different and some things are the same.
So, there are long term changes:
https://climate.nasa.gov/news/2948/milankovitch-orbital-cycles-and-their-role-in-earths-climate/#:~:text=Precession%20–%20As%20Earth%20rotates%2C%20it,the%20equator%2C%20affecting%20its%20rotation.
But long changes are probably a lot more frequent than the estimations–but even if they weren’t, they still happen NOW, not some other random time:
And while there’s theories that the ice sheets melting could change rotational wobble, we have more direct links to earthquakes being the cause:
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/110316-japan-earthquake-shortened-days-earth-axis-spin-nasa-science
So since earthquakes are regular occurrences (daily), but the big ones are where we can measure it are rare, there’s enough in this to say that there is no such thing as a true weather pattern, it’s only weather patterns for a time, and at least some of it has little to do with us.
But still, there are cycles. Laura Ingalls Wilder recorded in that record year for snow that the NAs were telling settlers that there was a roughly 7 year cycle, and the 3rd one was hell (21 years). I’ve noticed vaguely roughly similar patterns with overall snowfall–not always precisely 7 years, and not always as severe as in the past.
We also have a sense of isolation to our storms. If you asked yourself what the worst hurricane was, you’d likely name recent history.
But storm surge is one of the best indicators of what you’re dealing with, and that’s not a new record:
42 ft, 1899:
https://wmo.asu.edu/content/tropical-cyclone-largest-storm-surge-associated-tropical-cyclone
Compare that to one of the worst storms to hit the US?
28 ft, 2005,
24 ft, 1995, 1969
https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/surge/
Don’t get me wrong, these storms are bad and I don’t like living through these things down here, but many of the big ones aren’t even last century, some of them we only have the water marks for.
So there’s a sense that calamities only happens when we can measure them, and that’s a pretty easy mindset to fall into.
So: patterns are real, patterns change over time, and it’s easy to be a little bothered by it all. Shrugs