I don't think I believe them. The map is trying to tell me I'm in zone 6a. Not even going to use that for buying plants!

I read this on DG as well. I think they are full of it! I'm stiking with zone 7. Every zone 8 plant that stays outside dies here.

Yes, sometimes the zones don't hold true because of the microclimates that occur within just about every zone.

I misspoke. I'm actually still 6a. 6b really begins about a mile east of me, so I didn't change. You have to zoom in all the way to detect differences.

Karen

Well, they have us firmly planted in zone 6a, but I'm still not sure I buy those average temperatures. However, I may stop looking for plants that will survive to zone 4!

I'M A 6b due to the fact that we're on a plateau.

Haha, I'm in zone 13b. Never over 95 degrees, and humidity usually 60% Never under 68 degrees, brrrr! The sea around an island moderates the temperature.

I lived in Ft Lauderdale for a while, wowee, that's one hot place in the summer!

Sounds wonderful Melissa...how is the cost of living? ;)

Alan

Funny, last winter we had -16F here and six miles north at Westover Air Force Base they recorded -21F. We're now z6a.

By using Puerto Rico to zoom in, I seem to be in 13a. I'm guessing that is how Melissa in St Croix got her zone of 13b. I think Dave needs to add some higher zones to the drop down list in profiles

Our avg minimum temps are between 60°F and 65°F in January. However, these zones don't help much for tropical climates where the amount of rain, whether it is year around or seasonal, humidity and avg highs are more important. We are hotter in the spring than any other time of the year (avg high 83°, max 97° in May), because the rains don't start until sometime in June. We get about 40" of rain annually but almost all of it within 4 or 5 months in the summer and it can be very dry in the winter.

extranjera said:I think Dave needs to add some higher zones to the drop down list in profiles

Yes, I guess it's time for that. I've made the update!

>> A long time ago I wrote software to read it, parse the information and present to the user their own local frost dates information.

That would be really great!

Once upon a time I found the NOAA daily and monthly details for my local station.
I was able to look back several years, and find the occasional cold spell that went down to Zero F - 15-20 degrees lower than my "average minimum".

It would be nice to be able to find (for example) how many years out of the last 50 went below X degrees for my local weather station.

And the date for each year of the ACTUAL last hard frost, medium frost and mild frost.

I'm also trying to think of how to word this for a search: "duration of unsettled weather in the Spring" for each year. Or call it the "gotcha period" during which you might THINK it was safe to set out seedlings, but it really would not have worked for that year.

Each period would start when any 4-day period averaged 'fairly warm", like above 45 F. The period would end at the last 4-day period that averaged "fairly cold", like 32 or 34F.

Just day-dreaming. I think the only solution for Zone Optimists is mobile hoop tunnels tall enough to enclose whatever it is that you don't want to lose, from seedlings through shrubs.

All of this would be very nice. The problem is, that data isn't available. To write software to handle that, you would need the historical information for every station. As far as I know, NOAA doesn't give that data out in any standard format.

I also wanted to grumble at the USDA about how limited in usefullness hardiness zones are. Zone 8 includes both Texas and coastal WA - our summers are as different as possible (very hot vs. very cool)

From reading forums, it sounds as if parts of texas havee to complete their entire Spring tomato crop BEFORE I can safely put put my first plants: their days are getting too hot before my nights are warm enough.

Even "frost free days" don't mean much when summer might never go over 75, or never go under 85!

I agree that Sunset climate zones are great, but probably there are too many of them for seed and plant vendors to give usefull info for every climate zone. I guess that we gardeners are just going to have to continue learning, experimenting and thinking!

Maybe I found some URL that let me pull up one search at a time, manually.

But it was a struggle to find, and then another struggle to learn how to "drive" , and I couldn't find it again the next time I tried.

I just remember my jaw dropping when I found several years that went below zero.

Well, keep in mind that the USDA hardiness zones only speak to cold hardiness and have nothing at all to do with heat, length of frost free season, etc.

Given all of the environmental variables I don't see how better criteria are possible. Our Holyoke "mountains" (at about 500' vertical they're only mountains hereabouts) run east-west and are cut thru by the CT river. The east side of the valley is bounded by mountains of similar height. There is a significant temp. differential between in the valley and out of the valley let alone the minor altitude effects. I've found the Freeze Frost dates published by our local University extension reasonable guidelines, but being New England, predictions based on historical data have a huge margin of error.

Thanks Dave! That was fast!