[HN Gopher] The USDA's gardening zones shifted, this map shows y...
___________________________________________________________________
The USDA's gardening zones shifted, this map shows you what's
changed
Author : geox
Score : 397 points
Date : 2024-05-13 12:32 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (apps.npr.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (apps.npr.org)
| ericmay wrote:
| I thought that was a really nice website and visual journey.
| blinding-streak wrote:
| Amazing job by NPR. Made a very dry topic really interesting.
| taylodl wrote:
| 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.
| angry_moose wrote:
| 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.
| jvm___ wrote:
| "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.
| MikeTheGreat wrote:
| 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.
| angry_moose wrote:
| 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.
| jvm___ wrote:
| Also any sort of wildflowers let the bees eat an easy
| first meal before everything blooms.
| andybak wrote:
| Impossible or inconvenient?
| jvm___ wrote:
| Irresponsible looking if you share 20ft of grass with a
| neighbour.
| alistairSH wrote:
| Meh. They could stop over-tending their yard.
|
| The perfect lawn is a relatively new thing - blame Scott
| lawn and other lawn-care companies.
| HeyLaughingBoy wrote:
| I already have foot-high grass in places. Ask me if I care
| :-)
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| > Where I live, winters are 4.5 degrees warmer.
|
| 4.5 degrees warmer since when? And where?
| angry_moose wrote:
| 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.
| playingalong wrote:
| FWIW they likely mean Fahrenheit. I.e. 2.5 Celsius.
| taylodl wrote:
| Yes, I did. 4.5 degrees Celsius would be a newsworthy
| increase in winter temperatures! :)
| voisin wrote:
| Where I am at, in the Canadian Rockies, the daily
| temperature this winter was routinely 7-9 degrees Celsius
| above average (1970-2020) according to my iOS Weather
| app. They introduced this feature last year and I have
| been checking it nearly every day. Other than a cold snap
| in January (that killed my bees!) the weather was warmer
| every single day.
| georgeburdell wrote:
| Same. Blueberries, which require a certain number of chill
| hours, are perhaps the most affected
| Salgat wrote:
| 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.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Maybe we should start calling it climate instability instead
| of climate change.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| 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?
| lesuorac wrote:
| 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
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| 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.
| lesuorac wrote:
| So you don't trust data from 2024; got it.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| 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.
| anonymousiam wrote:
| 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.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| 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.
| bee_rider wrote:
| I don't really care to prove it, I was going off that
| Texan's report of their personal experiences.
| Repulsion9513 wrote:
| 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?
| itishappy wrote:
| Does it matter if they're typical or not when plants no
| longer grow where they use to?
| melenaboija wrote:
| If climate stability has changed I like it being called
| climate change.
| bee_rider wrote:
| 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).
| et-al wrote:
| 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.
| umanwizard wrote:
| Alliteration has to do with sounds, not letters.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Someone else suggested Climate Crisis which is actually
| alliterative and also sounds bad rather than neutral like
| "change."
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| Seems like you are really interested in marketing.
| bee_rider wrote:
| It's just the way the conversation happened to flow. I
| think everyone has an opinion on names.
|
| For solutions I'm in favor of really aggressive carbon
| taxes and sanctions/secondary sanctions against that
| don't implement them. But that's the sort of thing better
| left to regulators and diplomats.
| bee_rider wrote:
| 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.
| buildsjets wrote:
| You are being downvoted because making spurious
| complaints about nomenclature is a classic denialist
| tactic.
| peatmoss wrote:
| 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.
| bee_rider wrote:
| 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.
| pjc50 wrote:
| "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.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Does instability sound more watered down than change? IMO
| instability is more obviously bad.
| scruple wrote:
| "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.
| mistermann wrote:
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Streetlight_effect
| papercrane wrote:
| The term "climate change" usage had a PR person behind
| it. Republican strategist Frank Luntz pushed for
| politicians to use the term instead of "Global warming"
| has it sounds less severe.
|
| The term is often misattributed to Luntz, but it existed
| before him.
| klyrs wrote:
| Apocalypse is only 3 syllables.
| specialist wrote:
| I now say "climate crisis".
| bee_rider wrote:
| That seems even better, it has all the negative
| connotations I wanted, while remaining punchy and
| alliterative.
| treflop wrote:
| 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).
| gorwell wrote:
| Just call it "climate"
| jkestner wrote:
| 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.
| morkalork wrote:
| 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.
| steve_adams_86 wrote:
| 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.
| randomdata wrote:
| 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.
| adra wrote:
| 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.
| red-iron-pine wrote:
| not just smoke tainted, a small bit of Kelowna (the heart
| of BC wine country) straight up burned down last year
|
| https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-
| columbia/mcdougall-cr...
|
| the whole area is actually surprisingly dry in terms of
| rain due to being in the rain shadow of the mountain. the
| lakes nearby make it tolerable, but even a small shift in
| climate patterns will turn the area into a near-desert.
| bgentry wrote:
| 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 0degF or
| slightly negative. In each of the subsequent 2 winters we've
| also had temps drop lower than anything shown on this graph
| :)
| spuzz wrote:
| Crazy how these days even the native Texan palm tree is in
| trouble.
| bcrosby95 wrote:
| Record breaking heat last summer killed off a lot of cactus
| in Arizona.
| throw0101d wrote:
| 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/NM07/202
| 3/NM071202...
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| 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...
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Yeah... Ok, my average temperature increased by %4.x
| percent, but my variance increased by quite a bit more than
| that. The assumptions underlying the growing zone
| approximation were never great ones, but I find the whole
| idea largely irrelevant now. Cold snaps a good ten degrees
| below normal have now repeatedly killed established natives
| (as in you could find them in local wildlife preserves).
| And the long dry spells averaging what used to be the
| yearly high, now kill plants adapted to live in actual
| deserts. Is it wrong that part of me is fascinated to see
| what comes next?
| voisin wrote:
| > my average temperature increased by %4.x percent
|
| Can you do that with temperatures not in kelvin (with
| true zero)?
| cozzyd wrote:
| you can do what you want but it doesn't make it
| meaningful
| DangitBobby wrote:
| It's not more meaningful in Kelvin. 1 to 4 is a 300%
| increase and so is 200 to 800. So hearing 300% tells you
| absolutely nothing, without the added context of "from
| the previous average temperature of the region".
| voisin wrote:
| My point is that a 4% increase in numbers on a scale
| where zero does not equate tot he total absence is not
| actually 4% hotter.
| aftbit wrote:
| Things like this make me want to install some kind of
| heaters near my most prized plants. The power cost would be
| pretty high, and they wouldn't be sufficient to make it
| through the winter or anything, but they might allow us to
| weather a night or two of freezing temperatures in the
| early spring.
| deadbabe wrote:
| How long might it be until certain plants capable of
| surviving these swings in temperature evolve?
| RoyalHenOil wrote:
| Quicker for plants that reproduce very rapidly, like garden
| weeds. Very slow for plants that takes a long time to
| reproduce, like shrubs and trees.
| klyrs wrote:
| And then how long until we have cultivars of those species
| that viably contribute to human nutrition?
| llambda wrote:
| > but the 800-pound gorilla in the room is _climate change_.
| Where I live, winters are 4.5 degrees _warmer_.
|
| 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...
| Spivak wrote:
| 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.
| ryandrake wrote:
| You're not going to gain support/understanding for
| something, from people who have made up their minds, simply
| by changing the name of the thing. The same people who were
| sending chain E-mails in the 90s that said "How could it be
| Global Warming if it's so cold outside! LOL" are now
| posting Facebook memes that say "Duh, Climate has always
| been Changing!" Any new name someone gives it will be
| equally ridiculed, because its opponents don't care what
| it's called.
| nozzlegear wrote:
| 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.
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| Many of the impacts of climate change have to do with
| increased variance rather than with shifted average.
|
| For example, every +0C day in the winter leads to snow melt.
| The total amount of snow collected per winter depends highly
| on the number of +0C days in the winter. Your average
| temperature might only go from -11C to -10C, but if there are
| 20 additional +0C days, you might end up with a lot less snow
| cover.
| vondur wrote:
| Weird, in my area in SoCal winters have become cooler. Summers
| are definitely warmer.
| timr wrote:
| This update is based on a dataset change that shifts the
| observation period by 15 years. Buried within a footnote that
| nobody will ever read:
|
| > 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.
|
| So while climate change may or may not be the explanation for
| broader trends in the map, you cannot rule out noise for any
| particular location, especially given that the methodology uses
| the _lowest winter temperature_ in that window as the basis for
| the zone. That 's a fundamentally noisy metric. For example,
| this drops the blizzard of 1978 -- one of the largest ever in
| US history -- from the dataset. It's hard to know how that
| affects the zones without careful inspection, but major weather
| events like that can easily affect simple outlier analysis. You
| can see this in the dot plots for Raleigh (the default), which
| had two outliers in the winters around 1995, and then _an
| otherwise flat series of data_. What was the prior dataset? We
| don 't know.
|
| IMO, the fact that NPR buried this information while hyper-
| focusing on specific locations is just another failure of basic
| journalism. Telling people that an arbitrarily defined metric
| has been changed is meaningless, unless you tell people the
| specific change that was made. It should be the first or second
| thing they tell you, not buried in a hidden footnote.
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| 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...
| kop316 wrote:
| If you actually want to view the map:
| https://planthardiness.ars.usda.gov/
|
| The frame link goes to:
| https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/b1d1fd9b284e46dcaa4...
| queuebert wrote:
| Thank you. That website was an abomination. Scrolling to do
| anything but move the content up should be highly discouraged.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| The difference between people who look at data to be informed
| and people who look at data to feel informed.
| jameshart wrote:
| The website linked is a news article, not a map.
| toss1 wrote:
| 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...
| jameshart wrote:
| 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?
| toss1 wrote:
| 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".
| jameshart wrote:
| 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.
| toss1 wrote:
| 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.
| burkaman wrote:
| 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.
| supplied_demand wrote:
| ==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.
| digitalsushi wrote:
| i find that opinion somewhat gatekeepy and i disagree with
| it
| bombcar wrote:
| 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.
| baq wrote:
| 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.
| nozzlegear wrote:
| 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.
| karaterobot wrote:
| 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.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| It's an educational product. A product where someone
| looks at masses of data, pulls out the salient points and
| presents them directly. Why would most people want to go
| to a site with csv files for weather data in every zip
| code?
| HelloMcFly wrote:
| It's a gentle - and to my eyes effective - introduction
| and overview on a topic many people have heard about but
| most have probably not really read or considered further.
| It wasn't just meant to be a "look at old vs. new map" -
| it had a lot more context and information than that
| compiled for personal relevance and easy of
| understanding.
| seany wrote:
| gatekeeping is important some times
| arrowsmith wrote:
| Just ask the people of Troy!
| cameronh90 wrote:
| Many people absorb information better when it's presented
| in a more easily consumable format.
| hightrix wrote:
| Agreed, but I would consider
| https://planthardiness.ars.usda.gov/ to be much more
| easily consumed than the NPR article.
|
| As another said, scrolling to do anything but move
| content up and down is a miserable experience for some
| people.
| dyauspitr wrote:
| I disagree. I liked the experience. It wasn't jittery and the
| content was short enough to be presented in that format.
| kps wrote:
| It also doesn't respect `:prefers-reduced-motion` or
| `:prefers-color-scheme`.
| Repulsion9513 wrote:
| 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++
| riedel wrote:
| 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.
| danginurass wrote:
| I am _physically_ unable consume that kind of "here comes
| the airplane" content. Oddly someone would say this makes
| me autistic.
| sjs382 wrote:
| As a jpg:
| https://planthardiness.ars.usda.gov/system/files/National_Ma...
| jrgd wrote:
| 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
| thrusong wrote:
| Thank you for this-- I was equally frustrated I couldn't look
| up Canada too!
| mithr wrote:
| Really nicely delivered, and a pretty great practical
| illustration (to the right audience) of the effects of global
| warming.
| rqtwteye wrote:
| 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.
| asdajksah2123 wrote:
| 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.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Armadillos now as far north as Illinois, Nebraska. Wild.
| tcmart14 wrote:
| 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.
| dgrin91 wrote:
| 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?
| bombcar wrote:
| 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.)
| hosh wrote:
| 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.
| madcaptenor wrote:
| 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.
| VyseofArcadia wrote:
| 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.
| jellicle wrote:
| "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.
| justsid wrote:
| 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.
| willcodeforfoo wrote:
| Really nice data visualization... PMTiles!
| https://apps.npr.org/plant-hardiness-garden-map/assets/synce...
| monkburger wrote:
| 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.
| kbenson wrote:
| > 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.
| monkburger wrote:
| 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!
| kbenson wrote:
| 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.
| TylerE wrote:
| 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.
| monkburger wrote:
| 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)
| genewitch wrote:
| 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.
| linuxftw wrote:
| 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.
| Ylpertnodi wrote:
| -3F or -3C?
| genewitch wrote:
| 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.
| unnamed76ri wrote:
| 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.
| TylerE wrote:
| 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.
| tzs wrote:
| 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.
| TylerE wrote:
| 99.9% of web search forms that ask for a city accept a zip
| code, and are often more accurate when doing so, as even a
| mid sized city can be composed of dozens of zip codes, never
| mind places like Central Manhattan where some zipcodes
| resolve all the way down to single buildings.
| itslennysfault wrote:
| ...but this page is part of the 0.1% (by your math) that
| actually wants what it asked for. So, this is just a case
| of user error. Enter what it asked for and it works great.
| interestica wrote:
| As a Canadian, constraining the data viz by political border
| is annoying.
| danginurass wrote:
| Your tax dollars paid for it btw
| danginurass wrote:
| There's nothing more progressive than giving part of my
| paycheck indirectly to a shitty developer who can only work
| at an NGO
| Sparkle-san wrote:
| NPR could have spent every single taxpayer dollar they
| received for the year on this one project and it would still
| be a rounding error on the national budget.
| TylerE wrote:
| Less than 1% of NPR funding comes from taxes.
| mattgrice wrote:
| 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.
| nemo44x wrote:
| > I think the US should move to SI
|
| F is a much better unit than C for everyday use.
| kd5bjo wrote:
| 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.
| Illniyar wrote:
| 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).
| DataDive wrote:
| > _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)
| tzs wrote:
| > 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?
| NeoTar wrote:
| > 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.
| hanniabu wrote:
| 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.
| dmoy wrote:
| > but apparently you still need to across much of the US,
| and dealing with negative numbers is... fine?
|
| Honestly, you don't really need to, at least on a day-to-
| day basis. I grew up somewhere where it got <0F every year
| for like a week at a time. You will just colloquially refer
| to it as "below zero" which roughly translates into "yea
| f** that, we aren't going outside".
|
| The only time I ever really remembered distinguishing
| between degrees below 0 was midwestern trash talk between
| e.g. IL, WI, MN, and ND. (If I remember correctly, ND wins
| on wind chill)
| CatWChainsaw wrote:
| "30 is hot, 20 is nice, 10 is chilly, 0 is ice".
|
| You're welcome.
| RoyalHenOil wrote:
| I use both F and C (I grew up exclusively using F, but now I
| have a lot of experience with both), and I prefer C.
|
| It's more handy for cold weather because freezing is 0deg
| (which is way less awkward than 32deg), and it's more handy
| for cooking because boiling is 100deg (which is way less
| awkward than 212deg).
|
| It's also nice that the human body temperature is a round
| 37deg (rather than 98.6deg).
|
| For warmer weather, F and C are about the same to me. It's
| easy to remember that 20degC is perfect, 30degC is hot, and
| 40degC is miserable -- just as it is easy to remember the
| equivalent 70degF, 85degF, and 100degF.
|
| So I have found that C is better for day-to-day use, even
| though it's not what I grew up with and I have drastically
| less experience with it. All I needed was a little time to
| get used to it.
| throwaway2016a wrote:
| 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.
| g051051 wrote:
| 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"
| Illniyar wrote:
| 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.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| They refuse to update so many hazard maps due to improved
| science, im amazed no ones disputed this
| swalling wrote:
| 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.
| downrightmike wrote:
| That little walking plant is cool for 5 seconds, but super
| annoying and you can't close it
| adversaryIdiot wrote:
| how can i get that cute ass pot walking around my screen 24/7?
| zwieback wrote:
| No change in my hometown of Corvallis OR but plenty of change in
| the areas surrounding the Willamette Valley.
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| 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.
| bagels wrote:
| Because the minimum temperature is higher or lower than before?
| Tiktaalik wrote:
| I suspect due to colder weather and because of more
| erraticness. We've had some colder stretches and we're now
| experiencing more sudden cold snaps deeper into Spring.
| Latter situation especially bad if a plant is coming out of
| dormancy and then experiences freezing temperatures.
|
| The label I saw was on a native to Mexico plant.
| VoodooJuJu wrote:
| I was excited to see this and the changes that occurred, but this
| "map" is one of those preachy hyperinteractive visual
| storytelling scrollslop things that the likes of NYT routinely
| creates.
|
| Anyone have a link to the actual map of the zone changes without
| the interactive TikTok experience?
| j-bos wrote:
| While I didn't have patience to see the full page, the walking
| potted plant works perfectly on mobile! It was nice.
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