Climate analogues

A friend sent me this, and I don’t know the source, but it provides a different and perhaps useful perspective on climate zones.

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That’s interesting. I don’t think most people know those other counties climates very well. Most people don’t know our climates very well. And many of those other counties have highly varied climates. Saying the southeast is China, well China varies a lot as well.

I’m in southwest Texas which they’re equating to India. Maybe India has some high deserts but I think of India as mostly tropical monsoon grading to high mountains. I guess there’s some west Texas type areas in India.

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I agree that some of those comparisons are to areas too large to be meaningful, but as to my specific area (Cascadian lowlands/PNW), that’s pretty spot-on. A friend of mine from high school moved to London around when I moved to Seattle, and for many years we’d regularly comment on how our weather was nearly identical. They’ve moved to NYC now, or “central Japan” by that map.

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It seems spot on for my location in northern Kentucky as well where Japan, China and Russia meet. We are ate up with invasives from Russia (autumn olive), China and Japan (bush honeysuckle and multiflora rose).

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Codeminders has a similar map, but it’s more precise regarding region. This is what I’ve been using.

It is not optimized for mobile, so you may have to load it on a desktop.

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I think my part of Pennsylvania is more like somewhere on the Korean peninsula than insular Japan. We have less coastal influence in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic. The summers are very hot and humid, but the winter and spring weather is more unstable. Japan has a large citrus industry, yet our supposed analogue likely doesn’t have any areas compatible for citrus except perhaps trifoliate orange hybrids.

We can grow plenty of Asian pears, peaches, and kaki if you’re in a warmer part of the region. However, things like Japanese plums often have damage from late frost because they flower whenever it starts to warm up, and our spring weather often doesn’t consistently stay warm.

Not to knock on the OP but anybody that knows anything about geography and climate would find this sooooooo stupid. I’m in USDA zone 4b and within an hour and a half drive I could go from 2b and 5b. The map may attempt to be clever but it fails at being clever.

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What, you think Russia doesn’t do the same. Russia and Alaska are pretty good analogs. And you are neighbors.

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Interior of Mexico is not humid, while interior of India is very humid. It’s not be a good analog there.

I would agree east coast of US resembles roughly east coast of Asia.

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I’m not catching your meaning. What is it that Russia does?

Taking a big blob of land and comparing it with another big blob of land is beyond pointless. Maybe this map will illustrate why Alaska and Russia are nothing alike

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I’m betting Russia goes from Z2 to 5 in many places close together.

And I like this thread. It’s not stupid.

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So do many many many places in the planet.

The thread is not stupid, we are socializing and shooting the proverbial breeze. I just think that blobbing geographical areas like that is stupid enough not to be funny.

My reaction too, China is similar size and spread as the US with varied climates.

The first map was just for fun, even if some didn’t find it quite so. More serious, but 10 years old is this map from NOAA.

This is very strange to do analogy with “Russia”. Russia id big. There is Siberia. There is Krasnodar. There is Far East. And there is Central Russia - four completely different climates in a very rough division. In fact there are much more.

I’m sorry if I came across as picking on your post, that was not my intent.

For what is worth this is my favorite map of the US:

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