Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Can’t find the map online for some reason, but I believe the official classification is
Tundra climates: Houston, Savannah, New Orleans
Subarctic: Tampa, Miami, South Padre
Continental: Punta Cana, Cancun, San Juan
Subtropical: Medellin, Guayaquil, Manaus
Tropical: Due to cold fronts, does not exist on planet Earth, maybe with climate change it will be possible one day
I’m finding that a lot of these maps overstate the Far East’s topicality by a lot and understate North America’s tropicality by a lot.
It’s very weird how on some of these maps the subtropical zone in America is kept almost exclusive to the tropical line - its essentially nonexistent. Whereas the subtropical/tropical ecozone in some of these maps is drawn all the way up to central Japan and Shandong province in China - which is a MASSIVE overstatement of the range of subtropicals in Asia. I find it kind of odd that you have subtropical maritime forests that support cabbage palm and palmetto forests in the coastal southeast, complete with live oaks, evergreen hollies, laurels, and bromeliads, and so many ecologists do not recognize them and/or group them in with objectively temperate areas of the northern US.
My guess is this “biotemeprature” measurement is essentially another ridiculous “hardiness zone” map that depends on scrutinizing mean minimums.
I prefer the Holdridge Life Zones map:
Biotemperature is the average of temperatures between 0 C and 30 C, and the Holdridge Life Zones are actually based off of biotemperature. According to this, the biotemperature for subtropical is 16c-18c depending on location and I think in North America it's 16 C.
Of course, one issue with the Holdridge Life Zones is that it has subtropical meaning no freezes. I think one could modify to just do the 16-18C line which can show where in the US South is Subtropical.
Tropical doesn't start until 24 C, so many highland tropical areas (such as San Jose Costa Rica) are depicted as subtropical despite being tropical under Koppen.
Otherwise if one does biotemperature:
Miami is tropical
Myrtle Beach is subtropical
DC is warm temperate.
Another reason Miami/South Florida is too warm to be grouped with Savannah or Charleston. It's the only area in the lower 48 with reliable tomato and sweet corn production in the dead of winter!
Location: Live:Downtown Phoenix, AZ/Work:Greater Los Angeles, CA
27,606 posts, read 14,604,784 times
Reputation: 9169
Quote:
Originally Posted by Asagi
Another reason Miami/South Florida is too warm to be grouped with Savannah or Charleston. It's the only area in the lower 48 with reliable tomato and sweet corn production in the dead of winter!
California and Arizona grow produce year round and they're not tropical
This, I mean, peas are very tolerant of the cold and frost, but nobody ever thinks that you can have other green things besides palms and broadleaf evergreen bushes. Isn't boxwood a type of broadleaf evergreen?? Not sure but it seem to be.
Broccoli and leek is a real bonus of winter imo.
Buxus is mostly a hedge plant here. I guess it qualifies as an evergreen broadleaf.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Asagi
Starting from about Houston-New Orleans-Jacksonville and going south (skewed towards the coast), the chance of potatoes, tomatoes, and peppers surviving the winter (especially in slightly protected areas, near walls or under trees etc) is >50%. Tomatoes and peppers will keep producing deep into December and even January if there's a warm spell.
Once you get to about Orlando and far southern Texas, it would not be unusual to pick ripe tomatoes on Christmas Day. Even January eggplants!
Large swaths of CA and some parts of AZ have a "year round" (or nearly so) for nightshades as well.
Tomatoes can survive here during winter - typically self seeded ones growing around around bush margins etc. They can produce flower up until early winter, but do little after that, although they look heathy enough..
Best nightshades that produce here through winter are Cape gooseberries -- abundant producers that have great tasting fruit right through winter and spring. Only have wild ones here
Tamarillos (tree tomatoes) are another great one, that have heavy crops through winter - have grown these for sale before, and are easy to grow.
A couple of photos showing the last late season tamarillos in late September, and showing the degree of frost damage after 27 frosts for the winter (2017)
I confess, I did not check New Orleans (which is funny because that's where my in-laws live) but I did check Houston (-15°C), Mobile (-18°C), Tallahassee (-19°C), Pensacola (-15°C), and Savannah (-16°C) which I then compared to Shanghai (-10°C). Records at Shanghai only go back to 1951 so I double-checked against a short-record station in Florida at a slightly lower latitude (St. Augustine at 29°N, low -12°C) and came to my conclusion.
Completely not scientific so I could be wrong. I'm certainly no big fan of the Chinese climates and either way both climates pale in comparison to their Southern Hemisphere counterparts.
BTW, New Orleans and the rest of the US southeast were not glaciated during the last Ice Age. Also actually very surprising how there were no glaciers in Eastern Siberia. Too dry perhaps? Looks like I've got some reading to do...
As I said, Wuhan is low in elevation and at latitude 30 and it is colder than everyone of those US cities except Tallahassee. I don't think we have a comparable station like Shanghai's in the US. Maybe downtown Charleston station which is here : https://www.google.com/maps/@32.7754...7i16384!8i8192 The coldest temp at that station since 1950 is -12C vs -10C for Shanghai. 10F vs 13.8F not much of a difference when you are that cold already.
Charleston latitude is 33N while Shanghai is at 31N. Savannah's airport is out in the sticks NW of the city which is not comparable at all to that Shanghai station in Xujiahui.
How about 10F record low at Changsha which is at low elevation and latitude 28N. Feb of 1972.
How about Hefei China at latitude 31.8N with a record low of -5F in 1955. The city is over 200 miles inland at elevation 100ft. Compare to Columbus, GA at latitude 32.5N with a record low of -2F. Hefei got record colder and has much worse winter averages 6.9/-.3C vs 14.8/3.4C at Columbus.
And here is Hefei in February. Looks quite green and more green than Columbus.
So, since it gets colder than Columbus, I highly doubt the cold made Columbus less green than a city with those records and averages. They have very hardy broadleaf evergreens in southern China that came back after the last ice age. North America has no connection to tropical regions like China. They migrated back north over thousands and thousands of years
into Hefei, while not in Columbus.
China wasn't glaciated at all, but had some areas of permafrost, while the ice came quite far down into NA. It cause temps too cold for broadleaf evergreens with more severe cold drops than China.
Look at this article about the last ice age. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart...old-180975674/ You can clearly see how much colder NA got due to the ice sheets, than China. That is why I mentioned glaciation in NA vs China. That article clearly shows NA got much colder than China due to the ice which was caused by more moisture available for snow than Asia.
That is maybe how their broadleaf evergreens survived but not sure. Or maybe they were wiped out in China too, but came back faster due to the land bridge from the tropics, while NA has been much slower for broadleaf evergreens to return due to the seed block. That is what I think.
As I said, Wuhan is low in elevation and at latitude 30 and it is colder than everyone of those US cities except Tallahassee. I don't think we have a comparable station like Shanghai's in the US. Maybe downtown Charleston station which is here : https://www.google.com/maps/@32.7754...7i16384!8i8192 The coldest temp at that station since 1950 is -12C vs -10C for Shanghai. 10F vs 13.8F not much of a difference when you are that cold already.
Charleston latitude is 33N while Shanghai is at 31N. Savannah's airport is out in the sticks NW of the city which is not comparable at all to that Shanghai station in Xujiahui.
How about 10F record low at Changsha which is at low elevation and latitude 28N. Feb of 1972.
How about Hefei China at latitude 31.8N with a record low of -5F in 1955. The city is over 200 miles inland at elevation 100ft. Compare to Columbus, GA at latitude 32.5N with a record low of -2F. Hefei got record colder and has much worse winter averages 6.9/-.3C vs 14.8/3.4C at Columbus.
And here is Hefei in February. Looks quite green and more green than Columbus.
So, since it gets colder than Columbus, I highly doubt the cold made Columbus less green than a city with those records and averages. They have very hardy broadleaf evergreens in southern China that came back after the last ice age. North America has no connection to tropical regions like China. They migrated back north over thousands and thousands of years
into Hefei, while not in Columbus.
China wasn't glaciated at all, but had some areas of permafrost, while the ice came quite far down into NA. It cause temps too cold for broadleaf evergreens with more severe cold drops than China.
Look at this article about the last ice age. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart...old-180975674/ You can clearly see how much colder NA got due to the ice sheets, than China. That is why I mentioned glaciation in NA vs China. That article clearly shows NA got much colder than China due to the ice which was caused by more moisture available for snow than Asia.
That is maybe how their broadleaf evergreens survived but not sure. Or maybe they were wiped out in China too, but came back faster due to the land bridge from the tropics, while NA has been much slower for broadleaf evergreens to return due to the seed block. That is what I think.
OK, perhaps the US southeast does not have colder absolute lows although the US does deviate more relative to averages. In a way that's good: it's because the US has higher averages. OTOH, if subtropical China is greener in winter than subtropical US perhaps the the stability might contribute (in addition to what you said).
BTW, no idea whether subtropical China is greener than subtropical US--just offering a potential explanation if that were to be the case. (I don't see a link to a photo of Hefei in your post.)
As I did in my first submissions, I think it may be appropriate to point out in this thread that there are many cities in the southeast subtropical US where - at least the downtown weather stations - have yet to reach 0 degrees (the freezing mark).
Based on my daily monitoring of the weather forecasts starting November 1 and continuing every day after: Jacksonville, Gainesville, Tallahassee, Pensacola, Mobile, Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, Ocracoke, Cape Hatteras, Charleston, Savannah, and St. Marys are those places.
And it's surprisingly easy to find snowy and icy pictures of southern China, the Mediterranean, North Africa, northern India, Southern Japan, and northern Vietnam - your point? You can cherry pick all day, if absurdly misportraying subtropical locations as cold makes you feel better about your ice box of a country
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Not sure but it seem to be.
