I am most interested in the heat zone maps and their accuracy, more for my desire to go out and care for my plants than the plants themselves. I detest the heat. When I’m interested in a property, I follow their weather, compare it to where I live, and check the maps. Philly is marked as having 15-30 days (per year!) over 86 degrees, or “zone 4.” I swear that can’t be correct, tho I’ve never actually counted the days. Right now I am obsessing about a property that is zone 3 (8-14 days). But it is about 3000 ft from zone 2, and 9000 ft from zone 1. I used to think heating/cooling degree days would be more accurate, but they too depend on the nearest weather recording station (which I can’t right now find maps for). Is there any better way to get more localized information? The elevation is as high as it gets in the area at the top of property, the bottom of the property is about 20 ft lower.
Unless you’re willing to put up with ads, ads, and more ads at Wunderground, you’re probably limited to automated measurements taken at a nearby airport. Perhaps NOAA’s Climate.gov Website can offer a solution. As with nearly all Federal data sources, this one is irritatingly inscrutable, and it requires javascript, which most browsers offer but which mine doesn’t unless I take steps.
NOTE: You may want to print these instructions so you can read them while you perform each step in another browser tab.
Go to the Climate Data Online Search page (opens in a new tab)
- Under Select Weather Observation Type/Dataset, select Daily Summaries.
- Under Select Data Range, click the calendar icon and select dates on the Start and End calendars to reflect your dates of interest. Then click APPLY.
- Under the Search for dropdown, select ZIP codes
- Enter the ZIP code of interest as the Search term, and then click Search.
Your search results show up in the left column with a map of your ZIP code on the right.
- Click the orange ADD TO CART button in the left column (these data are free).
- Place your cursor over the Cart button in the upper right. Click the orange VIEW ALL ITEMS button to go to the Select Cart Options page…
On the Select Cart Options page, continue with the default selections. Scroll to the bottom and click CONTINUE.
On the Review Order page, enter your email address (twice) and click SUBMIT ORDER. You can also find Help links on this page.
The REQUEST SUBMITTED page offers further information
The action will now move to your email inbox. First, you’ll receive a notice that the request has been submitted. Usually, just a few minutes later, you’ll receive an email stating that your order has been processed. The second email contains a link for you to download the data you requested, in a multi-page data table. Check all pages to see the full range of data.
By default, what you get eMailed back to you is a *.pdf file, which nowadays will probably open just fine in your browser. In my case it covered the range of days from 1 Jan to 1 Aug. In fact, it covered those days three times from apparently different weather reporting stations. Only the first had any useful data. Good luck!