There have been 3 updates to the zones in the past 50 years. Some of the updates are due to better accuracy after years of collecting data, but the 800-pound gorilla in the room is climate change. Where I live, winters are 4.5 degrees warmer. It has definitely affected my gardening.
If you actually want to view the map: https://planthardiness.ars.usda.gov/
The frame link goes to: https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/b1d1fd9b284e46dcaa4...
Thank you. That website was an abomination. Scrolling to do anything but move the content up should be highly discouraged.
The difference between people who look at data to be informed and people who look at data to feel informed.
The website linked is a news article, not a map.
Yes, and the complaint is that news should be about informing, not about entertaining to make people feel informed [0]. This is more infotainment than information.
[0] This concept implemented at scale by Roger Ailes, founder of Fox news, who famously said "Our viewers don't want be informed, they want to feel informed", which became the motto of the newsroom
One ref among many: https://www.marketplace.org/2017/05/18/roger-ailes-transform...
The article provides useful context about how much the hardiness grades have changed, where, and why; it provides context about what these ratings do and don’t mean; it adds context about other climate changes that aren’t captured in this data; and it frames it with advice about planting, underpinned by a visually interesting data plot, and a tool that allows you to explore that data in a way that makes it personally relevant to you.
Why on earth would you choose an article like this to jump on a hobby horse about infotainment?
I found it only marginally informative, the "interactive" map didn't work as well as I expected, and overall I found it disappointingly info-tainment-ish.
I would not have said anything, but seeing the prior two comment, I responded to add something; sorry you found it disappointing, but my intent was not to "jump on a hobby horse about infotainment".
You probably didn’t scroll down very far then.
Did you already know that these ‘hardiness’ climate zones are only based on mean winter minimum temperature? They say nothing about drought prevalence, peak heat, or the timing, frequency and duration of cold snaps?
If you did, well, sure, this probably wouldn’t have been very informative. But for anyone for whom all that was news, this is pretty good information - and in particular is valuable context over and above just a raw map of the zones.
Yes, I did know that, and I did scroll down to the bottom. Even though it contained some good information, I just thought it was presented in a way that excessively got in the way of actually understanding and using the info, and that the graphic presentation was lame, just A:B with a very constrained and poorly working city-picker box (said enter city, wouldn't work or even give an error message unless you entered only one of the cities they actually had in their list, so should have been presented as a drop-down, not a free-entry box), didn't show the areas where there were differences vs stayed in the same zone, etc. etc. etc.
Just looking at the map doesn't tell you what hardiness zone means or how to apply (and not apply) this knowledge. I would say it makes you feel informed by teaching you a piece of trivia ("I'm in zone 8a") without actually informing you by giving you the tools to use what you've learned.
==without actually informing you by giving you the tools to use what you've learned==
The title of the article doesn't imply that it will teach you how to implement. The title explicitly states it is a map to show you the shift in zones, and it does that very clearly.
i find that opinion somewhat gatekeepy and i disagree with it
It may be gatekeepy but it nailed it; this type of website is an entertainment product, not an actual data product.
That may not be bad but it may not be what you wanted.
This is also gatekeepy. You don't need to be a stats dweeb staring at maps and raw data points to be or become informed.
No, it's an educational product. It is a walkthrough explaining the context and meaning of the map for those poor, ignorant people who don't know everything already. All you have to do to dismiss it forever is click a single button, "explore map", which is always on the top left of the screen.
Not really. It is a tutorial-class material. What you want when you say 'just give me the map' is a reference-class material.
Anecdotally I learned a lot from this - haven't even been aware of the concept.
gatekeeping is important some times
Just ask the people of Troy!
Many people absorb information better when it's presented in a more easily consumable format.
It worked for me sewhat after I understood the interaction and was somehow nice UX (I agree that there is better option for immediately better usability) However, I think even considering UX, there are clearly interaction hints missing to encourage the scrolling interaction in the first place. Secondly, it makes it really hard to find information again after reading it once sequentially. A menu type thing would probably fix that as well.
It also doesn't respect `:prefers-reduced-motion` or `:prefers-color-scheme`.
I disagree. I liked the experience. It wasn’t jittery and the content was short enough to be presented in that format.
Even once I got to the end I couldn't actually use the map because the left side of it (with the legend and year-switcher) was off-screen :) best web design A++
I've gone from 6b to 7a.
Winters almost do not exist here in the mid-Atlantic. Sure, there are some cold snaps, but they do not last as long as 20 to 30 years ago. Snowfall? Getting less and less with an occasional nor'easter here and there.
Ancedotally, in late February, I had to mow the lawn.
We've started measuring TTFF. (Time-to-first-frost). Historically, it was in early to mid October for decades. Now it's pushing mid-November. The growing seasons are longer, for sure.
Winters almost do not exist here ... Snowfall? Getting less and less with an occasional nor'easter here and there.
That seems like a regional saying, which translates very poorly to an online global audience. I read winters almost do not exist and assumed you were being more literal than "there's less snow".
It's snowed here 2-3 times in the last couple decades, each time for maybe a minute or two. I still wouldn't say we don't have a winter. For this area, winter is when it rains. Which is different than summer because there's no rain in the summer, almost ever (maybe one day on average as freak weather).
Edit: I seem to have struck a nerve here, but I'm not sure why noting that a particular turn of phrase might be confusing to people from other areas would do so.
Our last big snowstorm was in 2016. Afterwards we were in a snowfall drought for years (well below average)
We had a few close calls for big snow, but they never materialized. This is unheard of.
Even during strong El Nino patterns, the east coast is supposed to receive good snowfall. It did not happen. Even with a -NAO, -AO, +PNA!
My point was that in some areas they equate winter with snow, and reduction of snow seems to be interpreted as no winter. If the weather patter is still notably different than summer, it's winter. Equating snow in the current area to winter and lack of it to not being winter is a regional thing. It makes certain statements, like "winters almost do not exist here" come across very differently to people in other regions, which what what I was trying to express.
For example, my initial interpretation of your early statements in that comment was that you were saying there's little difference between fall and spring from winter, that your winters don't have a noticeable difference to the other seasons. From the rest of your comment it sounds like it's just somewhat milder than it used to be, but still notably different weather pattern.
Here in quasi-coastal NC, I'm down to maybe 10 days a year wearing long pants. It got up to 71F New Years Day this year, and February had days in the 80s (and none below freezing). There's basically pollen season, summer, fall, repeat. It doesn't seem to be much colder, if at all, in January than November. i barely ever see my breath.
Not at all how it was in the exact town 35 years ago as a kid. It wasn't frigid, even then, but we had a real Winter season where it would consistently stay cold for 3-4 months.
Now, even though it can get cold, it seems like you have a "nice day" weekend at least once a month.
Indeed. We have a very limited winter. There are often more warm days than cold days.
The last time I had to use my snowblower was in a mega snowstorm during the winter of 2015/2016. That is simply unheard of! (at least here)
I saw my breath outside, yesterday, in louisiana. It was 66 degrees and slightly raining.
edit: I don't think this has solely to do with the ambient temperature and more to do with wet bulb temperatures.
Hardiness zones are about the minimum temperature. This doesn't impact annuals, but perennial crops such as fruit trees, the minimum is the most important metric. It doesn't matter if you hit -3 degrees (for example) once a decade, or once a year, it will kill your orchard.
This map update is nonsense for my area.
here in louisiana it's snowed 3 times in the last 11 years. It routinely will go several days at a hard freeze. It very nearly is always at or below freezing at night. I have a CSV of 5-minute granularity temperatures going back several years (at least 5 years).
It's gotten to freezing in southern california, in that decade, as well - at night. Growing up there, it never did, but around 2002 or so it got to 30 one night. I have friends in the PNW, utah, colorado, texas. The US has a long cycle, and listening to people who have either moved around a lot or not been alive for more than 1 cycle is funny to me.
I enjoy talking to old timers, especially about nature. Prior to 2021, the year everyone made fun of Texans, there was 1 large freeze in the early or mid 2000s, where ice formed on power lines and broke the lines. Prior to that, it hadn't happened for at least 30 years to anyone's recollection.
Oh, and i live in a sub-tropical rainforest. It rained exactly 5" this weekend - i just went and checked. I comment a lot about the weather on my boring facebook account, so i can see all the times it's rained more than an inch or two - or where rain was predicted but didn't appear.
Come summertime, when it's "the hottest ever recorded", there will be different arguments from one side, as usual.
It is very nice to see US-targeted media use F. All climate related news seems to use C and I'd bet that 95%+ of Americans don't know 2 degrees C = 3.6 degrees F. So most Americans are underestimating the effects of climate change by almost a factor of 2. And those are the ones that believe in it.
I think the US should move to SI but as long as we haven't (and have actually taken steps backwards during the Bush administration) as far as I am concerned it is journalistic malpractice if not active disinformation to report temperature changes in C in US media.
I think the US should move to SI
F is a much better unit than C for everyday use.
I've used C all my life, but moved to the US lately and trying to start using F.
Probably the easiest measurement change to get used to. There's very little difference in actual practice.
C makes it easier to reason regarding freezing/boiling - it's simpler to think about if it's going to snow by relating it to 0 then 32. But that's about the only difference in day to day use I can think of.
I haven't heard any reason to prefer F over C however (unlike Feet for example).
Probably the easiest measurement change to get used to.
here is a counter-anecdotal evidence I moved to the US 25 years ago, still hate F with passion
I gave it a serious go. After trying to get used to F for 20-some years, I went back and set all my thermometers and online weather maps to Celsius.
Farenheit is an absurdly bad scale choice. It is needlessly granular for everyday use and feels wholly arbitrary.
32 degrees is freezing, so how far is 19 F from freezing? 32-19 ... ummm 13 degrees and that is as far as 32+19 ... ummm 51 degrees ... what are we talking about? -10 and +10 Celsius ...
I still don't know if 120F would burn my hands or not, if 150 F scalds or not. I have no sense about temperatures above 100F (and that one only because it is a threshold for fever)
I still don't know if 120F would burn my hands or not, if 150 F scalds or not. I have no sense about temperatures above 100F
I don't see how C would be easier for that. How do you know if 49℃ burns or 66℃ scalds?
F is a much better unit than C for everyday use.
People say this, and it confuses me.
Basically the only difference between the two is the absolute numbers and the resolution.
Regarding resolution, for me the difference between, say 22 C and 23 C isn’t consistently noticeable - it depends on what I’m wearing, my recent activity level, humidity, etc. having a finer resolution - i.e. between 72 and 73 F isn’t that useful. That is to say, I’d change my plans if it were say 8 C outside instead of 18 C, but I wouldn’t if it were 17 instead of 18.
Regarding absolute numbers - sure with Fahrenheit you don’t need to use negative numbers as much, but apparently you still need to across much of the US, and dealing with negative numbers is… fine? Having generally smaller numbers (i.e. most of Earth has natural temperatures of - 40 to +40) is probably better? And having that obvious distinction of when water freezes makes some sense maybe?
I honestly don’t thing either is particularly better for everyday use, it’s just that a lot of people are habituated to one or the other.
F is nice b/c it's pretty much on a 0-100 scale. 0 is really cold, 100 is really hot. Anything below 0 or about 100 is pretty much death without proper care.
Having lived in regions that use both, I have to say that there’s not much difference in everyday experience once you’ve gotten used to it. I don’t think I’d like to be dealing with Kelvin (the actual SI temperature unit) on an everyday basis, though. Or maybe I’d get used to it just as easily as switching between C and F.
I'm really curious about the taxonomy of these zones. Why are there 13 zones with an 'a' and 'b' zone for each number? Why not just 26 zones?
Because it was initially divided into 13 zones. In 1990 they subdivided each zone into a and b zones.
I'm not finding any rationale on why subdividing instead of renumbering, but it probably alleviated confusion at the time. If you're in zone 6b, but you're used to thinking of yourself as zone 6, you're still mostly right even if you forget whether you're in a or b. Easier to remember than suddenly you're in zone 13.
"This plant is zone 6"
"Old numbering or new numbering?"
"I don't know, just says zone 6"
If you reuse your numbering system, you have to specify which version you're using. Using an all-new numbering scheme eliminates that.
Isn’t it the exact opposite? If it just says zone 6, it’s the old system because no a or b suffix.
If the number space got doubled zone 6 would still exist but mean something completely different now. You can’t tell if it’s the old or new system at all because the first numbers all got re-used but with different meaning.
The “a” and “b” zones subdivides it.
Zone 10 is tropical, and never gets frost. Each “a” and “b” represents a 5 degree range.
You can also create microclimates, local areas where the zone effectively shifts up or down about 5 degrees.
As an aside, there is a heat hardiness zone that rarely gets talked about.
You can find that if you scroll down the article far enough, or at https://ahsgardening.org/about-us/news-press/cool_timeline/h... - it's based on the number of days above 86 degrees F (30 degrees C).
I would like to see these two maps overlaid on each other somehow.
The Plant Hardiness Zone Map (PHZM) is based on the average annual extreme minimum winter temperature, displayed as 10-degree F zones ranging from zone 1 (coldest) to zone 13 (warmest). Each zone is divided into half zones designated as ‘a’ and ‘b’. For example, 7a and 7b are 5-degree F increments representing the colder and warmer halves of zone 7, respectively.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardiness_zone
(It was originally the 13 bands, but as things got more detailed they realized splitting them made a difference, I suspect.)
I wish the US had a similar "bug zone". Where I live has seen a whole slew of bugs that did not exist beyond several states South making it all the way up here over the last decade and a half.
I havn't seen maps for bugs in general. But there are some maps the track specific bugs. Like I check for maps regarding ticks. They are getting farther and farther north.
Armadillos now as far north as Illinois, Nebraska. Wild.
and that's the canadian version; for those living up-north and frustrated like me to not be able to see something continent-wide
http://planthardiness.gc.ca/?m=1
i would love to see something for the south as well (just quickly googled) https://davisla.wordpress.com/plant-zones/south-america-plan...
I'm unsure though if they receive an update recently or if they will anytime soon
Thank you for this— I was equally frustrated I couldn't look up Canada too!
Does anyone else HATE pages like this? Just show me the damn map and not 5 different pop up overlays, many animated, depending on how hard scrolled down I am.
Oh, and their "zip code" search is broken, it takes me to the state capital over a hundred miles away, in a totally different climactic zone. Doubly broken.
They don't have a zip code search as far as I can tell. It asks you to enter your city and state or use the "Surprise me!" button.
No change in my hometown of Corvallis OR but plenty of change in the areas surrounding the Willamette Valley.
Really nice data visualization... PMTiles! https://apps.npr.org/plant-hardiness-garden-map/assets/synce...
When this new map was first released, it was very amusing watching people in gardening Facebook groups start planning to grow plants that have died whenever they tried in the past. Just because the government gave them a new number, they think it suddenly changed the reality on the ground.
I grow 25+ kinds of fruit and I’d love to add more. But the reality is that fruits like figs and muscadines still die every winter where I am at.
when did the climate not change?
This is cool but I found the UX confusing at first. It was not intuitive to me at all I had to scroll to see more information.
This NPR map looks wrong in some places, I would just trust the actual USDA map https://planthardiness.ars.usda.gov/
For instance, the NPR source says that Portland, OR was reclassified as 9b, whereas the actual USDA map says that depending on your elevation, it's still either 8a or 8b.
I so much hate this format where you have to scroll for each little paragraph and can't jump quickly from one part to another.
Really nicely delivered, and a pretty great practical illustration (to the right audience) of the effects of global warming.
The worst excesses of "modern" web presentation, coupled with a complete lack of actual gardening info...I'm completely baffled. 1% "here's your zone", and 99% "your zone is almost no use for gardening"
I thought that was a really nice website and visual journey.
That little walking plant is cool for 5 seconds, but super annoying and you can't close it
They refuse to update so many hazard maps due to improved science, im amazed no ones disputed this
Amazing job by NPR. Made a very dry topic really interesting.
how can i get that cute ass pot walking around my screen 24/7?
West central FL has been losing winter. Anecdotally, I felt my lowest temps of the year go from teens (1990s) to high 30s & 40s.
Not sure if it was my perception, I looked up a chart and it confirmed the trend.
edit: I can't find the chart I saw for my region. The closest is this: Avg Jan temps but for whole state.
https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/access/monitoring/climate-at-a-gla...
Was at the garden centre yesterday and on some plants over top the regular labels the store had put their own stickers on top:
“Not winter hardy in our new climate”
Kind of a “buyer beware” type thing for long time customers used to buying these plants that while previously dependable perennials now might not be.
Really disturbing stuff to see.
This is such a well made site. Nice to look at, not too flashy and very informative.
Made me keep reading on a subject I care not at all about.
Climate change is rough here in Austin TX because it's getting hotter, but we're also getting more extreme spikes in freezing temperatures. There's a whole slew of plants and trees that can't survive here because of how cold it gets for only a couple days a year. It's not uncommon to lose something like a Palm tree due to one cold day out of the entire year.
Maybe we should start calling it climate instability instead of climate change.
If the reliable granular data is 100 years or so, and the core samples are known to be lacking granular indication… how a you prove that the spikes and dips are atypical?
Eh, try like 300 years at least; you can get data from 1662 to now easy from NOAA. Governments love to collect data about mundane things; you could probably get a larger archive from a country that existed prior to 1781.
https://www.ncei.noaa.gov/cdo-web/datasets
Yea, I’m not sure we can rely on 1 degree of reliable resolution for when people believe in unicorns, dragons, a geocentric universe theory, and when the Celsius scale was not when water freezes at zero and boils at 100.
I don’t doubt that those records lacked quality due to inconsistent measuring equipment, standards, and practices. It has nothing to do with the beliefs of people at the time, though.
This was a time period in which scientists actually improved these technologies and practices, and we stand on the shoulders of that progress. They were doing the best they could with what they had.
Geocentrism was also well on the way out 300 years ago.
My point is mostly that people in the past did some great work, and having weird beliefs didn’t diminish that. People in the future will think we were similarly clueless for all kinds of reasons. You just do the best you can with the information and environment you’ve got.
One could use the same argument to include forest fire data prior to 1960, or to include heat/drought data prior to 1979, but climate alarmists do not want to do that because it destroys their narrative.
If you read what I said again, you should notice that I’m not saying the data from 300 years ago should necessarily be used. I’m saying that the reason not to use it has nothing to do with people believing in dragons or unicorns.
The part about measurements is fair (they weren’t standardized at the time), but the rest is irrelevant. The decision of whether or not to use data should be on the basis of its scientific rigour and veracity, not the scientist’s beliefs.
So you don't trust data from 2024; got it.
I don’t really care to prove it, I was going off that Texan’s report of their personal experiences.
If they look atypical for the last 100 years or so, and also look atypical from the less "granular", even-longer-term samples... then how do you prove that they're typical?
I seem to be getting lots of downvotes on what I thought was a pretty mundane and off the cuff post. Maybe there’s some history I’m not aware of.
My thought process was: Climate change is mostly bad, but it sounds like a sort of neutral, or even natural process. Environmentalists have done a good job pointing out that it is bad, but the name isn’t doing them any favors. Instability seems to be one of the major side effects and instability is very obviously bad.
I guess I’m curious if there’s a “pro-fixing the problem” argument against “climate instability.” By default I’m going to assume that I’m mostly being downvoted by climate deniers. But I’d be happy to be educated otherwise, if there’s a real argument against calling it instability.
I've written similar comments in other forums and have gotten a similar response. To me, global warming is on average true, but doesn't encompass the full range of negative local impacts.
Climate change feels euphemistic compared to climate instability. Like, all things change, so it's chill, right? I like "instability" because it feels like the time of chaos and contempt that the scientific consensus tells us we're facing.
But... then I realize I'm wordsmithing a problem. While rhetoric is important and all, I think many of our current issues get over-talked and under-actioned. I don't know that the wording is significant relative to other barriers to bringing about change.
I think you are right.
I don’t love “climate change” because it sounds too euphemistic, IMO. But the wording isn’t the biggest problem anyway. A
nd it has solid associations at this point.
You are being downvoted because making spurious complaints about nomenclature is a classic denialist tactic.
"Climate change" is already watered down from "global warming", because people were nitpicking that it wasn't always warmer everywhere. Things like the late cold snaps people mention in this thread. But: on average, it's warmer almost everywhere.
"Global warming" is what you get when you let the scientists pick the name. "Climate change" is better but you can still get the sense that it's lacking in a solid PR person to figure this out. I'd have thought that, by now, any of the hundreds of corporations attaching themselves to Sustainability, Inc. would've solved this particular naming problem for us.
Does instability sound more watered down than change? IMO instability is more obviously bad.
If climate stability has changed I like it being called climate change.
It just sounds a little dry. I think environmentalists have done a good job drilling the fact that it is a bad thing into us, but in the face of it “climate change” sounds like a sort of generic and neutral process. Global warming was a little better (I think? Or maybe I just grew up knowing it was a bad thing).
Climate Instability sounds sort of clearly bad (I think most people consider instability bad).
If we're workshopping this for you: "climate change" has alliteration and is only 3 syllables compared to "instability" which has a mouthful of 5 syllables.
I now say "climate crisis".
That seems even better, it has all the negative connotations I wanted, while remaining punchy and alliterative.
I’m not sure why this is so downvoted.
I think instability sells it better to someone who is not sure if they believe in climate change because they can personally see it (worsening hurricanes, worsening cold snaps, hotter days).
I'm in Canada and spring is starting earlier and earlier every year but we will still get blasts of (what used to be normal for that time of year) frost/snow/freezing rain. The problem is with the warm weather, fruit trees will start to bud early and when the cold comes at night it kills all the buds and that's it, no fruit. Last year apple orchards all over lost their crops to this. The instability is what's going to cause chaos in the world.
Have you heard about the damage done to grape and stone fruit crops in BC? It has been happening consistently enough that I expect some vineyards not to exist in the next decade.
Even where I am it’s considered a temperate climate and a friend’s grape crops were almost totally destroyed from a snap freeze in late February. He said it wasn’t that uncommon for the freezes to happen when he started, but what changed is how early the vines start budding, like you mentioned.
Late-starting crops can bypass this problem, but my understanding is that they often need irrigation because they grow into the tail of summer. That’s not really viable here either, as water’s gradually diminishing from our extended drought.
Spring seems like it comes later and later to my eye. When I started farming in Canada we would have the ground prepped in mid-April and were really to start planting May 1st.
In the last 5-10 years we struggle to even get on the ground until mid-May. This year is no exception. May 13th already and we have only half of a field planted so far.
BC wine industry in some areas purportedly had a crop loss of something like 90% by some estimates. With a 3 year turn around to re-establish the plants, and a very smoke tainted 2021, their industry is certainly in a trouble spot. Let's see if they have enough reserves to sell to get them past this disaster.
Crazy how these days even the native Texan palm tree is in trouble.
Record breaking heat last summer killed off a lot of cactus in Arizona.
Too hot for some planes to fly:
* https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/06/20/533662790...
* https://www.azfamily.com/2023/07/20/how-extreme-heat-can-imp...
Air is no longer dense enough:
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Density_altitude
* https://skybrary.aero/articles/density-altitude
* PDF: https://www.faasafety.gov/files/events/NM/NM07/2023/NM071202...
Also in Austin. We have almost all native species, so no maintenance in theory but it's getting harder. We're focusing on drought resistance. I can do my best to cover the ones in danger of freezing on those few days, but harder to water everything constantly.
Yep, was thinking the same thing. Climate change is also (at least partially) responsible for instability in the polar vortexes that shoot south more often now. Between Winter Storm Uri in Feb 2021 and "icemageddon" in Feb 2023 we lost a ton of plants and trees. We have a retaining wall in the back of our property and had a couple giant, cascading rosemary bushes that completely covered the wall - they were so pretty and always smelled amazing. I still get sad thinking about how Uri took those beauties out...
I'm also in Austin and laughing a bit at these results. It seems like the dataset cuts off after 2020 while trying to illustrate that winters haven't gotten very cold lately, and that is the reason we've been changed to a different zone.
And yet just after that in 2021 we had temps drop to 0°F or slightly negative. In each of the subsequent 2 winters we've also had temps drop lower than anything shown on this graph :)
Same here. The longstanding "rule" for my area is "no planting before Mother's Day!"
For the last 8 years or so, ~April 20th has been very safe. I usually pick the first weekend after ~April 15th, which doesn't have an overnight low under 38 on the 10 day forecast. Haven't had an issue yet.
Thankfully some of the stores are starting to break the "rule", because for a long time it was impossible to even get plants before Mother's Day.
"No mow May" to save the bees/over-wintering insects - is now almost impossible as you'll have more than a foot high of regular lawn grass before June 1.
Genuine question: how does not mowing your lawn helps bees / insects?
I'm guessing that the lawn itself is incidental, and by not mowing you're letting flowers (including dandelions and clover?) grow?
Also, I'm gonna be up front about my ulterior motive: I hardly mow my lawn anyways and would love to have another reason to justify / rationalize what I'm already doing :)
But still - genuine question.
Many insects lay their eggs in the grass which hatch in early spring. By mowing early you may be destroying all of these eggs before they hatch.
There's debate about how effective it is, but that's the theory at least.
Also any sort of wildflowers let the bees eat an easy first meal before everything blooms.
Impossible or inconvenient?
Irresponsible looking if you share 20ft of grass with a neighbour.
I already have foot-high grass in places. Ask me if I care :-)
4.5 degrees warmer since when? And where?
FWIW they likely mean Fahrenheit. I.e. 2.5 Celsius.
The map has an explanation:
About this data
The 2012 USDA hardiness zones were calculated using the average lowest winter temperature for the observation period of 1976-2005. The new zones are calculated using the years 1991-2020. These two observation windows overlap. Colors show the difference between the two 30-year averages for each place on the map.
My area is 3.8F warmer using this method.
The George W. Bush administration (e.g. via Frank Luntz) advocated for the term "climate change" because Republican strategists wanted to leverage perceived uncertainty about global warming as much as possible.[0]
This is a PR effort that seems to have largely succeeded (both in adoption and its goals) and it's unfortunate that when we are literally talking about warming we adopt a term that is less precise; you are talking about global warming here.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2003/mar/04/usnews.c...
This is an odd telling of history because the term climate change was also pushed by the scientific community as a more precise alternative because people didn't grasp how global warming could make some places colder with larger temperature swings in both directions.
It's conflating two things, Luntz and Republicans at the time did want to push a narrative of uncertainty surrounding greenhouse gas emissions and they wanted to switch terminology in a pro-environmental move because of the existing connotations surrounding global warming and "environmentalists" made it hard to get any Republican support.
I was surprised to learn that the average in my town had only gone up 1 degree since the last update. I expected a bigger jump like yours, purely based on vibes.
Same. Blueberries, which require a certain number of chill hours, are perhaps the most affected