Days with low at or below freezing is intriguing. While the overall trend is warmer over 75 years, that single chart suggests your climate is far more turbulent today than then. Indications are clear that you can probably grow plants today that would have been impossible in 1948, but with a caveat a cold snap is more likely to kill them in early spring.
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Thatâs quite the counter example, dang. I assume the combination of high latitude and maritime climate is at work here?
Now Iâm tempted to run the numbers for SoCal, the upper Midwest, south Florida, and maybe Yucatan, oh and definitely Alaska or Moscow, something way up north. Iâd assume wildly different effects.
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I would say the majority of people would be fine with a 70 degree plus Christmas but to me it doesnât feel right kind of like if it snowed on the fourth of July. Alaska you are not included.
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My Christmas ended fifty something years ago after I read this in the Bible:
Jeremiah 10
For me, it just gives Insurance. When we moved from 7b to 8a for most of Georgia, I donât take it that all my plantings should be 8a plants. I simply now donât worry about established 7b plants. I expect 8a plants to require protection because of the wide temperature swingsâŚ
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Sure, I agree. The only thing Iâve seen consistently about the weather of late is that it is unpredictable. As someone pointed out, it only takes one night of sustained temps below 28 to have a complete loss of fruit. Around here, those big swings seem to come in threes.
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I dropped a half zone. Weâll see I guess
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I will soon be moving from newly designated 9a W. Washington to newly designated 6b N. Ohio.
As much as I appreciate the mild Winters in W Washington, the Summers are not warm enough.
I would like to play around with breeding brambles and hybrid persimmons. I will also be able to grow the vegetables of my childhood. There is something comforting about that. I was so disgusted when I realized I could not grow decent tomatoes in Tacoma. In N Ohio, a single tomato plant can keep a family stocked for the Summer. I donât eat them raw, but there is a difference between fresh and canned.
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Iâm in 9b Southern Gulf Islands across the Strait in Canada. I had so many tomatoes this year it was crazy, I only finished processing the remainder last week. Iâm rather stunned that being so close to each other, and our zones being so similar that you canât grow tomatoes in your location. I would never have guessed that our areas would be that dissimilar. Who knew?
I wish you luck growing until your heartâs content in your new home.
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I tend to push too hard and too far
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I had the same thought. My tomatoes never go light. Corn and hot peppers, always a challenge. But all my neighbors by august have had their fill of gift porch tomatoes and zucchini. Tomatoes to the ears so to speak.
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I agree that my tomatoes do produce well here, but the same varieties are a lot less flavorful than when I grew them on the east coast. The heat units matter for flavor.
On a topic more in line with this thread, I decided to do some more detailed analysis of my own outdoor temperature sensor data. Last winter was somewhat colder than normal, so itâs no huge surprise we got tons of chilling hours and freezing hours too. These numbers are for the last 12 months (11-18-2022 to 11-17-2023):
- Hours below freezing: 284.6
- Hours between 32°F and 45°F: 8280.3
I didnât limit it to whole hours, though. I counted the total number of minutes and then divided by 60. I guess technically youâre only supposed to count whole hours each day?
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Try this on your piano:
This gives you access to the same dataset that the USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Maps (PHZMs) are based on. Pick your location. Pick your data items. Pick your series. Clicking on âRetrieve Time Seriesâ brings up a graph. Then, clicking on âDownload Time Seriesâ dumps a text file into your âDownloadsâ folder. The first few lines are meta data, and the last few are comma-separated-value (csv) info. Extract the csv info with your favorite text editor, save it, and open it in a spreadsheet.
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The ACIS data is also pretty handy, and they have a lot of preset graphs, summary tables, etc, with just enough configurability to make it interesting. I think @Barkslip tipped me off to this one.
Go there, and find your state/county. Find the closest station to you with a blue dot next to it (either on the list or the map) and select it. Some have better time ranges than others.
Next, pick your summary that youâre interested in. I like Monthly Summarized Data, First/Last Dates, Accumulation, and FROST. To get what @BobVance was looking for, go to Monthly Summarized Data, select Min Temp for Variable, and set the number of missing data points youâll tolerate (I give a generous allowance when Iâm interested in the year summary).
Once youâve done all that, click on Go in the top right. It will give you a summary table of Min temps by month and year, with an average. Buttons at the top let you export the data however you want. When youâre done viewing, click the âXâ to go back, not the back arrow on your browser.
Hereâs this yearâs GDD Summary (base 50). If you hover over the graph, it will give you the present and min, max, and mean for that date:
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Sadly, when I tried it, I was advised that there were no ACIS stations in my county.
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Oh, darn! Maybe one of the neighboring counties has some?
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Alphabetically and geographically, Schuyler is immediately next to Seneca, and we are a mile away from a town that participates.
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Still in 8B but just so. You can really see where the developed areas are. In our little town of 3500 itâs 9A 3 miles away.
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HEAT ISLAND they call them. All the asphalt and shingles more than burning coal or gas contributes to the heating of blobs of real estate called cities. Big cities. Ugh.
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I think for Apples, USDA zones are just part useful. Looking back at temp records were certainly get 720 chill hours just Dec-Feb. It is a lock we get 800 on average here.
High heat tolerance is a big thing here. Sun Burn is real here too.
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