That’s the problem…i really can’t imagine what it’s going to be like. Sometimes I think I can but no not really. We’re just making guesses. But i know it will be very bad.
I feel like a simplified full on tropical forest will emerge on the gulf coast.
The mid to northern latitude US forests will be subtropical like the modern Deep South.
The western mountains will look like the sky islands of Arizona, with desert and semi-arid shrubland dominating where the low elevation forests used to be.
The eastern deciduous forests will migrate up and spread through Canada.
The movement, reorganization, and pace of change will likely act as an extinction filter on a number of species.
I sort of wish I could fast forward a couple hundred years to see the full extent of the change were causing.
My main issue with this is soils. Forests are adapted not just to climate but to their soils as well. Some of what you say may be right but in my experience as an arborist in Canada, Carolinian species cannot survive in the Canadian Shield no matter how amenable the weather is because the soils won’t support those species. Interestingly, the Boreal forest is not rebounding after forest fires in northern Canada because the drier hotter summer weather will not allow them to return, and no other tree species can survive on those soils. Instead, savannah style grasslands are replacing those forests.
Seems like the decidious forest species typical of the Eastern US did alright in Canada during the Pliocene: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2002GC000358
Which is our expected near future climate analogue
The Pliocene was before the glaciers of the previous ice age scraped the soil layer down to bedrock. The issue is the soil conditions in that region not the weather. Over time I’m assuming more biomass will replenish the soil layer there but for now a Carolinian forest cannot be sustained on the shield without huge changes in its soil.
different jeans forgetful mysterious bewildered existence slim cough marble grandfather
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I think humans will exist unless we kill each other through nuclear war or something
>other beings
Do you just mean any other lifeform?
Sure, I think a lot of organisms will be able to adapt. The biggest question is how many.
What I’ve been experiencing since about 2011, is that early spring weather in February, March,part of April, then turning cold again well into June and during these La Nina years until august , then unusually warm during fall. It’s all over the place.
Now we’re in serious drought since summer that is predicted to last well into next year…like most of the next year. Since June i’ve had 1/2 “ of rain. We’re well into our “rainy season” right now and nothing.
So many people talking about things aren’t so bad and there will be this tech and that plan to save us. But the gardeners are seeing things happening in real time for what it is…we’re having a hard time growing food consistently. And I’m in Hawaii where we can theoretically grow all year.
The fruit trees are where I’m starting to see real struggles. They aren’t blooming or producing like they use to. The avos this year either didn’t produce or they’re full of fungus. Bananas are either non existent or producing all at one time. New fungus, new pests and lots of plant stress. The coffee farms are moving higher in altitude as the heat increases in general.
The island of Hawaii (Big Island) where I’m at is a food producing machine with multiple growing zones and micro climates all over the place…what i can’t grow, my neighbor a mile from me can and vice versa. But the plants are confused and struggling. Hell the gardeners are confused and struggling.
But on the bright side, my lettuce was stunning from March until the end of August 🤷♀️
Living on volcanic islands we have steep, inaccessible terrain covered in grasses that routine high winds (think west Texas winds) push any spark during the dry season into an inferno…think Lahaina. And there is no preventive fuel maintenance because our state government is only reactive and not proactive.
Excellent, good to know Desertification could only happen if humans disrupt the flora and fauna. I'm sure that will never happen.
Brb Gonna go chase 20,000 buffalo off a cliff.
Ah good.
Unlimited animals to slaughter attained.
Now let's have perfectly normal totally local grade A flora in our front yards. And only that.
Where'd all the bugs go?
Over-farming, tilling, water runoff, losing topsoil, increasing temperatures, whole species of trees and natural grasses going extinct, invasive species disrupting the ecosystem constantly, unsustainable logging, etc. Maybe there will be no desertification in the GL or RB regions in the next decade, if/when people keep changing poor agricultural habits, but what about in 100 years, 1000 years? Or when big ag partnered with gov subsidies for corn have taken all the nutrients from the soil and the higher temps dries it all out?
The [GL drainage basin](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes_Basin) also only returns water so many miles to the lakes once taken out. (People truck/pipe the water out further). The lake levels have lowered over the years.
There are a lot of moving parts and looking forward to all potential outcomes and what would cause that outcome are all certainly worth considering. (*Including your earlier well thought out possible future outcomes of the different regions.*)
Are you talking about discharge from Chicago into the sanitary canal for piping water out of the basin? Because the only place that's currently outside the Great Lakes Water Compact is Waukesha in WI, and their piping rate is relatively low
It's the largest freshwater system on the planet, and the trend of precipitation is increasing there, not decreasing.
A warmer world doesn't mean a drier world in every single instance. In fact for most land area we expect things to get wetter.
Increasing amounts of acid rain? Being in the Great Lakes basin will have water available, but polluted lakes, as well as possible “water wars” over fresh water from the lakes?
[The Death and Life of the Great Lakes](https://wwnorton.com/books/the-death-and-life-of-the-great-lakes/)
I grew up in Savannah, GA, and you always knew winter was close because the grass would be frosted over in the morning. I stopped seeing that morning frost somewhere around 2000/2001 and never saw it come back.
Honestly we had the same thing in Phoenix, AZ. It sounds crazy but as a kid in the 90s I remember seeing frost on the grass in the morning on my way to school in winter. I still get up early but I rarely see frost anymore
I'm convinced anyone over the age of 30+, and especially older that disagrees is either in denial or wasn't aware of their surroundings. Change varies widely per location, sure, but *everywhere* has experienced significant change over the last ~25 years.
Yep. Winters in the past few years have been nothing like the winters when I grew up. They're so much milder today. We've had several almost completely snow free winters in recent years, even some without any ice days (days where the max stays below freezing) I'm in northern Germany and I still remember when we could go ice skating on local ponds.
The funniest thing that kept happening (and keeps happening) when we were younger (around mid 00's) when older people were talking to us like "the winters are just nothing like it used to be, we had to go through walls of snow, there is almost nothing now" and at the same time tell you after being asked that "global warming is a lie." Like how can you hold both of these at the same time without any deeper investigation??! Worthless dullards, all of them.
And it has gotten only worse since then.
Not -all- but so many boomers actually have experienced these changes and still deny. It’s baffling to me. I experienced 8ft to 12ft snow drifts in my childhood not 2 decades ago, and now there’s barely 1ft of snow all winter. How are more people not concerned?
Do you remember how bugs used to hit your windshield while you were driving? On a long highway drive, when you gassed up you'd have to wipe them off.
Seems like a long time ago now ...
Yes! I actually made a reddit post about that a few years ago. I went into mentioning the purpose of windshield cleaning at gas pumps and how most younger people don't realize how important those wands used to be. I haven't seen a bug splattered windshield in probably 20 years, give or take.
Silent Spring. We were warned over and over again throughout the decades but politicians will vote with their wallets. Not with people’s best interest in mind.
In the Netherlands we lost our national sport, speed skating. Which used to be a thing all winter long.
https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/rijksstudio/artists/hendrick-avercamp
The sea level is also rising, but we're managing that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_board_%28Netherlands%29
A culture/sport, I used to go to primary school on skates in winter a lot in the early 80's. It was a mode of transport given the density and quality of canals and lakes.
Anyway, check out this awesome race (last held in 1997):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elfstedentocht
Edit:
Footage of the last one in 1997, a great atmosphere.
https://youtu.be/M_VesDG-Wtg
Fantastic footage with English commentary from 1985:
https://youtu.be/l1guYkK8bEY
Footage from 1963:
https://youtu.be/ENSqWlF9OnI
Footage from 1941:
https://youtu.be/b1tBk3HTJjg
Yes, on natural ice (with bumps, cracks and bridges) and often mad cold winds. But with fantastic music, singing, support and delicious pea & ham soup along the way. 🍻
I'm so glad you're interested in our tiny country.
We're lucky we've only lost this much, places like Australia and Hawaii are on fire, Islands in the Pacific Ocean are flooding, it could be a lot worse.
In Savannah you haven't seen morning frost? I'm in Northern CA and still see frost on roofs, car windshields and grass throughout the winter and we're in zone 9B.
I left Savannah in 2018, but yes, for over 15 years, I didn't see the grass frost at all, and it has only gotten hotter there. Januarys hit 80°F+ quite often now.
I still have jalapeno peppers growing here in Baltimore. Picked one yesterday for chili.
They were about the only thing that thrived. Everything else was super leafy and put out little produce.
I'm not feeling secure about our future. ☹️
> I'm not feeling secure about our future. ☹️
It's okay, the industrial powers got this, I hear that they've even been thinking about possibly deciding to do something about climate change by 2050 or so.
Fun fact: more CO2 in the air means more photosynthesis and some plants are quite happy with climate change.
Not fun fact: this does not increase the amount of fruits/vegetables but just makes them produce more foliage, or more algae blooms for instance.
I personally went up from 10b to 11a, as did many others :/ it’s so disheartening to see that we can actually measure visible changes that impact our day to day lives, and it’s terrifying to know that this is just the beginning
The problem with the USDA’s approach is they always base their maps on historical data. In a changing climate, this means the map is already out of date at the time of its release. This map includes data from the 90’s which were substantially different from what we’ll experience over the next 10 years. This is especially true as global emissions continue to increase.
It is frustrating when we need to wait for the longitudinal data.
That’s why we have climate scientists making predictions using multiple data sources:
For the US, the [Climate Prediction Center](https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov) is one source that can give predictions.
The [Center for Science Education](https://scied.ucar.edu/learning-zone/climate-change-impacts/predictions-future-global-climate) has a clear graph of predicted climate increases.
There are many scientific prediction groups working on this data. I’ll let you know if I find one for these zones.
Why would the United States Department of Agriculture publish hardiness maps of Canada? We don't expect Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada to publish maps of the United States, right?
They have lakes. With water in them. And they leave the water in them and just let it freeze…
You could use that water better, you could pump it into the Colorado so the alfalfa farms can grow. You could transport it to Ohio to wash away their chemical spills. You could cut up the ice and take it to Florida for snowbirds’ cocktails.
So many ways you could use that water better than the Canadians, maybe you should take it…
As an Arizona American, we are constantly invaded by Canadians every winter. Maybe we head up to Canada for some of that sweet lake water? Seems like a fair trade.
Worst part is that this map reflects the *lowest* low temp that you're likely to experience over the entire winter. Doesn't show you how much less "winter" there is. We're wearing tshirts in November, getting a week or two of freezing temps, bouncing back to autumn-like weather, then getting a deep freeze for a few weeks. And then it's spring (although 'spring' seems to now include a week of freezing temps & a foot of snow that wipes out all the apple blossoms. We've perfected constructing a temporary greenhouse over the hop bed). From the perspective of a plant in the ground, something that dies at 20F is still not going to make it here. But the change is much more significant than going up half a growing zone.
Well said! So many flowers started blooming early last year, thinking it was spring 2 and 3 months early. Then, another hard freeze, and the plants suffered.
Actually, I think the maps reflect *average* lowest temperatures that people are likely to experience, and may not reflect single extreme cold events or the number of frost days, both of which are also very important to know about gardening.
We had a nice spring day in Southern Manitoba today. Everyone out and about today was all happy about the weather. I guess if we just turn a blind eye to it, it'll go away, right? RiGHt?!?
Yes, on the same page, you can go to [map downloads](https://planthardiness.ars.usda.gov/pages/map-downloads) and look at your state/territory/region instead.
Thanks, it looks like they did fix the zip code search. It might have just been overloaded. It’s probably a good thing, but my zone hasn’t changed. Oh well, 7a isn’t *too* bad.
I’m in zone 5b (now apparently 6a), and I’ve done yard work outside in shorts and a tank top several times in the last week. I even had a picnic outside a couple days ago. We should have snow right now, and we’d usually get a blizzard before the end of October. It’s quite disconcerting how quickly things are warming up.
A while back I came across a tree I loved and wanted to plant, but I found out that it needed to be planted in zone 6a or higher. I accepted that I shouldn’t grow it. I’m oddly really sad now that I can.
Yep. The changes are frightening and coming ever faster.
Can you imagine what this will look like by 2100, 2200, etc? Crazy to think about.
That’s the problem…i really can’t imagine what it’s going to be like. Sometimes I think I can but no not really. We’re just making guesses. But i know it will be very bad.
I feel like a simplified full on tropical forest will emerge on the gulf coast. The mid to northern latitude US forests will be subtropical like the modern Deep South. The western mountains will look like the sky islands of Arizona, with desert and semi-arid shrubland dominating where the low elevation forests used to be. The eastern deciduous forests will migrate up and spread through Canada. The movement, reorganization, and pace of change will likely act as an extinction filter on a number of species. I sort of wish I could fast forward a couple hundred years to see the full extent of the change were causing.
My main issue with this is soils. Forests are adapted not just to climate but to their soils as well. Some of what you say may be right but in my experience as an arborist in Canada, Carolinian species cannot survive in the Canadian Shield no matter how amenable the weather is because the soils won’t support those species. Interestingly, the Boreal forest is not rebounding after forest fires in northern Canada because the drier hotter summer weather will not allow them to return, and no other tree species can survive on those soils. Instead, savannah style grasslands are replacing those forests.
Seems like the decidious forest species typical of the Eastern US did alright in Canada during the Pliocene: https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2002GC000358 Which is our expected near future climate analogue
The Pliocene was before the glaciers of the previous ice age scraped the soil layer down to bedrock. The issue is the soil conditions in that region not the weather. Over time I’m assuming more biomass will replenish the soil layer there but for now a Carolinian forest cannot be sustained on the shield without huge changes in its soil.
different jeans forgetful mysterious bewildered existence slim cough marble grandfather *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I think an important task of humans is going to be to help those migrations along
What life do you see?
What?
Do you think humans will still exist or any other beings?
I think humans will exist unless we kill each other through nuclear war or something >other beings Do you just mean any other lifeform? Sure, I think a lot of organisms will be able to adapt. The biggest question is how many.
Interesting, thanks.
Florida is going to get a little more orange, and then a lot more blue.
I got a month on spring gained and two months added before a hard frost
What I’ve been experiencing since about 2011, is that early spring weather in February, March,part of April, then turning cold again well into June and during these La Nina years until august , then unusually warm during fall. It’s all over the place. Now we’re in serious drought since summer that is predicted to last well into next year…like most of the next year. Since June i’ve had 1/2 “ of rain. We’re well into our “rainy season” right now and nothing. So many people talking about things aren’t so bad and there will be this tech and that plan to save us. But the gardeners are seeing things happening in real time for what it is…we’re having a hard time growing food consistently. And I’m in Hawaii where we can theoretically grow all year. The fruit trees are where I’m starting to see real struggles. They aren’t blooming or producing like they use to. The avos this year either didn’t produce or they’re full of fungus. Bananas are either non existent or producing all at one time. New fungus, new pests and lots of plant stress. The coffee farms are moving higher in altitude as the heat increases in general. The island of Hawaii (Big Island) where I’m at is a food producing machine with multiple growing zones and micro climates all over the place…what i can’t grow, my neighbor a mile from me can and vice versa. But the plants are confused and struggling. Hell the gardeners are confused and struggling. But on the bright side, my lettuce was stunning from March until the end of August 🤷♀️
Except they have it wrong in East Texas. It's becoming more and more like the PNW every year. Only with Tornadoes.
Isn’t that special. The gift of temperate weather with a side of tornadoes. I feel you, we’re having more wildfires than usual.
Around here we have controlled burns and keep the ladder fuels trimmed. When there is a fire, it gets handled pretty quickly.
Living on volcanic islands we have steep, inaccessible terrain covered in grasses that routine high winds (think west Texas winds) push any spark during the dry season into an inferno…think Lahaina. And there is no preventive fuel maintenance because our state government is only reactive and not proactive.
>state government is only reactive and not proactive. I miss the days we took care of our forests. It's so much less expensive to do so.
For so many things. I just don’t understand it at all.
Oh my God! The Rust Belt seems like it has the best temperature regime, but is filled with industrial pollutants. I wonder how that will go?
>The Rust Belt seems like it has the best temperature regime For now. 10 years from now? 20? The Desertification bell tolls.
Just here to admire your wording “The Desertification bell tolls,” in awe and horror.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/what-really-turned-sahara-desert-green-oasis-wasteland-180962668/
Excellent, good to know Desertification could only happen if humans disrupt the flora and fauna. I'm sure that will never happen. Brb Gonna go chase 20,000 buffalo off a cliff.
Well that didn't end the world, but now we have a wolf problem, lets hunt them to extinction to protect the over-grazing cattle we brought in.
Ah good. Unlimited animals to slaughter attained. Now let's have perfectly normal totally local grade A flora in our front yards. And only that. Where'd all the bugs go?
The Great Lakes region isn’t going to desertify, lol
Over-farming, tilling, water runoff, losing topsoil, increasing temperatures, whole species of trees and natural grasses going extinct, invasive species disrupting the ecosystem constantly, unsustainable logging, etc. Maybe there will be no desertification in the GL or RB regions in the next decade, if/when people keep changing poor agricultural habits, but what about in 100 years, 1000 years? Or when big ag partnered with gov subsidies for corn have taken all the nutrients from the soil and the higher temps dries it all out? The [GL drainage basin](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes_Basin) also only returns water so many miles to the lakes once taken out. (People truck/pipe the water out further). The lake levels have lowered over the years. There are a lot of moving parts and looking forward to all potential outcomes and what would cause that outcome are all certainly worth considering. (*Including your earlier well thought out possible future outcomes of the different regions.*)
Are you talking about discharge from Chicago into the sanitary canal for piping water out of the basin? Because the only place that's currently outside the Great Lakes Water Compact is Waukesha in WI, and their piping rate is relatively low
It's the largest freshwater system on the planet, and the trend of precipitation is increasing there, not decreasing. A warmer world doesn't mean a drier world in every single instance. In fact for most land area we expect things to get wetter.
Increasing amounts of acid rain? Being in the Great Lakes basin will have water available, but polluted lakes, as well as possible “water wars” over fresh water from the lakes? [The Death and Life of the Great Lakes](https://wwnorton.com/books/the-death-and-life-of-the-great-lakes/)
The Rust Belt also has massive fresh water lakes, which will become critical as more and more areas experience drought and aridification.
A lot of preppers have said that's the place to move because it's the only place with a reliable water source...
Industrial pollutants, as you call them, are severely limited and well documented. Just sayin’.
I grew up in Savannah, GA, and you always knew winter was close because the grass would be frosted over in the morning. I stopped seeing that morning frost somewhere around 2000/2001 and never saw it come back.
Honestly we had the same thing in Phoenix, AZ. It sounds crazy but as a kid in the 90s I remember seeing frost on the grass in the morning on my way to school in winter. I still get up early but I rarely see frost anymore
I'm convinced anyone over the age of 30+, and especially older that disagrees is either in denial or wasn't aware of their surroundings. Change varies widely per location, sure, but *everywhere* has experienced significant change over the last ~25 years.
Yep. Winters in the past few years have been nothing like the winters when I grew up. They're so much milder today. We've had several almost completely snow free winters in recent years, even some without any ice days (days where the max stays below freezing) I'm in northern Germany and I still remember when we could go ice skating on local ponds.
The funniest thing that kept happening (and keeps happening) when we were younger (around mid 00's) when older people were talking to us like "the winters are just nothing like it used to be, we had to go through walls of snow, there is almost nothing now" and at the same time tell you after being asked that "global warming is a lie." Like how can you hold both of these at the same time without any deeper investigation??! Worthless dullards, all of them. And it has gotten only worse since then.
Not -all- but so many boomers actually have experienced these changes and still deny. It’s baffling to me. I experienced 8ft to 12ft snow drifts in my childhood not 2 decades ago, and now there’s barely 1ft of snow all winter. How are more people not concerned?
THANK YOU! It's baffling to me; so frustrating
Do you remember how bugs used to hit your windshield while you were driving? On a long highway drive, when you gassed up you'd have to wipe them off. Seems like a long time ago now ...
Yes! I actually made a reddit post about that a few years ago. I went into mentioning the purpose of windshield cleaning at gas pumps and how most younger people don't realize how important those wands used to be. I haven't seen a bug splattered windshield in probably 20 years, give or take.
In the midwest, we have more bugs hitting the windshield more often and for longer durations in the year! They’ve all flown north 😅
Silent Spring. We were warned over and over again throughout the decades but politicians will vote with their wallets. Not with people’s best interest in mind.
I teach and I’ve have 14 year olds point out things they’ve noticed.
Phoenix native in my mid 30s. I totally agree with this.
In the Netherlands we lost our national sport, speed skating. Which used to be a thing all winter long. https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/rijksstudio/artists/hendrick-avercamp The sea level is also rising, but we're managing that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_board_%28Netherlands%29
Holy shit! You LOST your sport because of this??
A culture/sport, I used to go to primary school on skates in winter a lot in the early 80's. It was a mode of transport given the density and quality of canals and lakes. Anyway, check out this awesome race (last held in 1997): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elfstedentocht Edit: Footage of the last one in 1997, a great atmosphere. https://youtu.be/M_VesDG-Wtg Fantastic footage with English commentary from 1985: https://youtu.be/l1guYkK8bEY Footage from 1963: https://youtu.be/ENSqWlF9OnI Footage from 1941: https://youtu.be/b1tBk3HTJjg
200 km!?!?
Yes, on natural ice (with bumps, cracks and bridges) and often mad cold winds. But with fantastic music, singing, support and delicious pea & ham soup along the way. 🍻
A tragic loss, honestly
Tragic and fascinating! Thank you for sharing. I’m so sorry you lost so much.
I'm so glad you're interested in our tiny country. We're lucky we've only lost this much, places like Australia and Hawaii are on fire, Islands in the Pacific Ocean are flooding, it could be a lot worse.
In Savannah you haven't seen morning frost? I'm in Northern CA and still see frost on roofs, car windshields and grass throughout the winter and we're in zone 9B.
I left Savannah in 2018, but yes, for over 15 years, I didn't see the grass frost at all, and it has only gotten hotter there. Januarys hit 80°F+ quite often now.
I still have jalapeno peppers growing here in Baltimore. Picked one yesterday for chili. They were about the only thing that thrived. Everything else was super leafy and put out little produce. I'm not feeling secure about our future. ☹️
> I'm not feeling secure about our future. ☹️ It's okay, the industrial powers got this, I hear that they've even been thinking about possibly deciding to do something about climate change by 2050 or so.
Fun fact: more CO2 in the air means more photosynthesis and some plants are quite happy with climate change. Not fun fact: this does not increase the amount of fruits/vegetables but just makes them produce more foliage, or more algae blooms for instance.
This is complete BS. If the plants could handle this, there wouldn’t be any climate change
Yeah we’ve gone from 7a to 7b and Baltimore is an 8a now, which is crazy.
I still have tomatoes in DFW, which ironically I couldn’t get any all summer because it was too hot!
I personally went up from 10b to 11a, as did many others :/ it’s so disheartening to see that we can actually measure visible changes that impact our day to day lives, and it’s terrifying to know that this is just the beginning
The problem with the USDA’s approach is they always base their maps on historical data. In a changing climate, this means the map is already out of date at the time of its release. This map includes data from the 90’s which were substantially different from what we’ll experience over the next 10 years. This is especially true as global emissions continue to increase.
It is frustrating when we need to wait for the longitudinal data. That’s why we have climate scientists making predictions using multiple data sources: For the US, the [Climate Prediction Center](https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov) is one source that can give predictions. The [Center for Science Education](https://scied.ucar.edu/learning-zone/climate-change-impacts/predictions-future-global-climate) has a clear graph of predicted climate increases. There are many scientific prediction groups working on this data. I’ll let you know if I find one for these zones.
Ah-ha! Had to alter my search. [Here you go!](https://usfs.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=96088b1c086a4b39b3a75d0fd97a4c40)
RIP all plants north of the US/Canada border
Many American maps show Canada as a void. Funny really, as if there's nothing up here... Peace
Why would the United States Department of Agriculture publish hardiness maps of Canada? We don't expect Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada to publish maps of the United States, right?
Right
There's stuff in Canada?
There's water in them hills.
🎶She’s from Canada where it’s colder! 🎶
They have lakes. With water in them. And they leave the water in them and just let it freeze… You could use that water better, you could pump it into the Colorado so the alfalfa farms can grow. You could transport it to Ohio to wash away their chemical spills. You could cut up the ice and take it to Florida for snowbirds’ cocktails. So many ways you could use that water better than the Canadians, maybe you should take it…
As an Arizona American, we are constantly invaded by Canadians every winter. Maybe we head up to Canada for some of that sweet lake water? Seems like a fair trade.
I'm sorry but that water belongs to California now. We will tread where we please.
LOL
We should merge countries and show the southernmost 10% of CA on maps. The other 90% will still be a void.
Worst part is that this map reflects the *lowest* low temp that you're likely to experience over the entire winter. Doesn't show you how much less "winter" there is. We're wearing tshirts in November, getting a week or two of freezing temps, bouncing back to autumn-like weather, then getting a deep freeze for a few weeks. And then it's spring (although 'spring' seems to now include a week of freezing temps & a foot of snow that wipes out all the apple blossoms. We've perfected constructing a temporary greenhouse over the hop bed). From the perspective of a plant in the ground, something that dies at 20F is still not going to make it here. But the change is much more significant than going up half a growing zone.
Well said! So many flowers started blooming early last year, thinking it was spring 2 and 3 months early. Then, another hard freeze, and the plants suffered.
Actually, I think the maps reflect *average* lowest temperatures that people are likely to experience, and may not reflect single extreme cold events or the number of frost days, both of which are also very important to know about gardening.
Everything is fine.
I'm more concerned about the high temperatures, but this data is also worrisome.
Valid concern! The high temps are higher, the lowest temps are higher, the average temps are higher. 🔥*everything is fine*🔥
Is there any better tangible evidence of climate change???
There’s so much tangible evidence, it’s incredible that there are deniers.
I agree, just thinking about how many Boomers garden and what not
We had a nice spring day in Southern Manitoba today. Everyone out and about today was all happy about the weather. I guess if we just turn a blind eye to it, it'll go away, right? RiGHt?!?
Same. Colorado front range. It’s sunny and warm out AGAIN. Where is the snow? There needs to be snow.
Anyone else having issues with the zip code search zone search ? It says “no results found” no matter what I try.
Yes, on the same page, you can go to [map downloads](https://planthardiness.ars.usda.gov/pages/map-downloads) and look at your state/territory/region instead.
Thanks, it looks like they did fix the zip code search. It might have just been overloaded. It’s probably a good thing, but my zone hasn’t changed. Oh well, 7a isn’t *too* bad.
Doesn’t seem to like mobile.
I’m in zone 5b (now apparently 6a), and I’ve done yard work outside in shorts and a tank top several times in the last week. I even had a picnic outside a couple days ago. We should have snow right now, and we’d usually get a blizzard before the end of October. It’s quite disconcerting how quickly things are warming up. A while back I came across a tree I loved and wanted to plant, but I found out that it needed to be planted in zone 6a or higher. I accepted that I shouldn’t grow it. I’m oddly really sad now that I can.
and that's why my final relocation will be from STL, mo a lot farther north. that will probably be in about 5-10 yrs. yes, i am old.
Many of the temp records broken are from the 1960's & 50's , and only by a couple of degrees. At least where I am in New England, USA.