Tools for climate and agriculture
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The USDA published a new Plant Hardiness Zone map about a week ago. The previous map was produced in 2012 and since that time gardeners have used it to determine what plants are suitable for their yards. The Plant Hardiness Zone map is based on the average lowest temperature a location receives sometime each winter.…
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This week we are expecting a big change in the prevailing weather pattern as a strong cold front moves through the region from northwest to southeast on Tuesday and Wednesday. The front will not have a lot of precipitation with it but will bring sharply colder and drier air to a lot of the region…
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I’ve seen some spectacular photos of autumn color this year in northern parts of the United States as well as in higher elevations in the Southern Appalachians. If you are interested in going on a leaf-peeping trip, here are some sources of information about where the color is at peak. If you go, drive carefully…
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If you are a CoCoRaHS precipitation observer, you may be interested in this new website that allows you to check out the climatology of your station at https://dex.cocorahs.org/?skip=0&take=50. If you don’t know what CoCoRaHS is, check out their website at https://cocorahs.org/ and consider joining a great citizen science project measuring precipitation across the nations of…
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How does climate change affect your neighborhood? A new map provides a detailed look at the different factors that may make your location more or less vulnerable to a warmer climate. The vulnerability depends on the population (more children or older folk are more sensitive to heat), what the land is used for (agriculture is…
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If you live along the Gulf Coast, this new free tool may help you identify the potential risks your home may be in danger of experiencing. When you put in your address, then it will use census tract data to determine the relative danger from different risks in the area and what kinds of insurance…
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Here is a very helpful online tool that I used today for creating custom maps of NCEI normals for anywhere in the United States that you might like to try. It was created by the Northeast Regional Climate Center and is located at https://ncei-normals-mapper.rcc-acis.org/. It is quite easy to use. It allows you to pick…