User:Bluecatcxl/Sunset climate zone

Sunset Climate Zone

Sunset Climate Zones refer to the Sunset Magazine's Western Garden Book description of the climate differences by geographical area for the 11 Western states, Alaska, and Hawaii, and British Columbia and Alberta provinces in Canada. The climate zones are defined by their latitude, elevation, ocean influence, and topography(cite).

The Sunset climate zones are one of several methods attempting to describe how a plant will do in a given location. Typically, a plant is described in the horticultural and botanical world by how cold tolerant it is, however the average minimum temperatures are often inadequate to determine if a plant will actually thrive in a given place. There are other key issues in plant survival beyond yearly minimum temperatures. These including summer temperatures, relative humidity, rainfall (including yearly averages as well as rainy seasons), snow cover, altitude, and any other stressful environmental factors(cite). The Sunset climate zones takes "the total climate: length of growing season, timing and amount of rainfall, winter lows, summer highs, wind, and humidity" into account and attempts to describe where a plant will thrive(cite). This system is used in most of the publications by Sunset Books having to do with plants or gardening.

Though this system is useful, it does have some drawbacks. Listed plant hardiness is often confusing, as there will be a long list of numbers after a given species or variety of plants. Sometimes there is ambiguity in the citation as to whether it is a Sunset Climate Zone, or a USDA Hardiness Zone. For example a plant listed as Zone 3 may refer to the USDA winter hardiness Zone (-40F) or it may refer to the warmer areas of the Great Basin, which would be up to USDA Zone 5-6.