Hardiness Zone Changes at arborday.org is an animated map of the “hardiness zones” the National Arbor Day Foundation uses for showing what species of trees will grow best where. This particular animation shows the changes in those zones caused by warming trends from 1990 through 2006. It’s scary.
Phae keeps telling me that our local SSE New York weather reminds her of North Carolina—Zone 7, which used to cover most of NC through VA, eastern MD, and DE, plus a bit of southern NJ, now covers western NC, almost all of VA, MD, and DE, plus most of NJ and our part of NY and southern CT!
All the other zones move north as well, with the warmest taking over half of FL and coastal/desert southern CA, and the coldest nearly vanishing from the northern states into Canada.
It’s really happening folks. Time to start buying that ocean front property around the edges of California’s Central Valley…