It's Warming Up

[Gregg]

This is kind of a carry over from the produce thread in Food, but thought the topic went better here. The USDA recently announced that the average frost free date in our area has been changed from May 8th to April 24th. While the gardener in me likes that part, moving that date by more than two weeks is a BIG shift! There are a lot of implications beyond my tomatoes. In a local sense I'm somewhat concerned about invasive species of both plants and animals. There are already several varieties of plants that just didn't grow here several years ago that are now causing problems. What are you guys seeing where you live?

[puglogic]

The invasives that are opportunistic by "starting early," like cheatgrass, are having a field day ( no pun intended ) The bindweed gets a nice early start strangling my plants, and the trees/shrubs that leaf out early are getting smacked down by our spring hailstorms. It's unnatural and a little scary.

[pinkytoe]

It is already hot, hot here - about a month early. Yesterday it got to 95. Last year, we had the worst drought in our state's history with a wildfire that destroyed the pine forests of a nearby state park. In early spring, there was a huge invasion of a fairly new to this area plant that took over the normal wildflower areas. I normally see hummingbirds passing through but not a one so far. I went to a lecture last week and the speaker is an international traveler who works to save bird species. He said "Believe it, folks. Global warming is real" as he described the environmental changes he is seeing all over the world.

[peggy]

If you look at your seed/plant catalogs you'll notice several of them have changed the zone map. We were cusp 5/6 and we are 6 now in most catalogs.

[Maxamillion]

We didn't have much of a winter here. I'm afraid of what the bugs are going to be like this summer. We've never had a winter that was this mild.

[ApatheticNoMore]

Rains came late this year, but better late than never (which is what I was expecting). It was a mild winter (I mean the rest of the country laughs but I'm actually shocked how cold it gets here each winter - not this year). We have had some heat waves, more often than usual. Although I haven't had to use A/C yet. Recently used the fan. Fruit trees definitely seemed to start flowering early.

[Spartana]

Here in coastal SoCal we haven't seen much heat yet but inland just 20 miles or less from the coast it's been in the 90's and even 100 last weekend. Heard it's been in the mid-100's in places like Texas, AZ. and NM even in early April - YIKES!! Very dry year too so everything outside the coastal (i.e fog and marine layer) zone is dead already. I expect a big fire season this year. I have also seem an emergence of more flowers and leaves much earlier this year as well as bugs like mosquitos. Cool, green, rainy Washington State is looking good!

[Rogar]

Here in the front range Rockies we had the driest March on record and a very dry April and very warm temps. Snow pack in the mountains, which supplies urban and agricultural areas with water is 40% of normal in many areas. I do volunteer work monitoring migrating raptors and our spring migration is about half of last year and on a general trend of far few counts than historic levels. So far, no one seems to know why but is most likely related to climate changes and changing migration patterns rather than declining populations.

Some areas of our mountains have 60% or so of the pine trees dead from pine beetles. This has been ongoing for maybe the last decade. Speculation is that our winters have not been cold enough to kill the beetles and it's amazing we haven't yet had huge forest fires with all the dead wood.

It's all sort of scary.

[puglogic]

I sometimes wonder what the folks in Oklahoma think of all of this. Both of their senators are very vocal about climate change being a myth, a liberal conspiracy, etc. They have to be suffering the same kinds of issues...to what do they attribute it?

[Gregg]

I have LOTS of family in Oklahoma. It's not that they aren't concerned, its just that they have bigger political worries right now. The economy, like everyone else. Okies are a pretty tough lot. They've been through droughts, heat waves, tornadoes, that little thing called the Dust Bowl and a lot more. I think they all believe the climate is shifting, but they also know that climate cycles are a natural occurrence. The discussion there is a lot like it is in other places, trying to determine if human activity is causing the changes or exacerbating the changes or not really impacting the shift one way or the other.

Some areas of our mountains have 60% or so of the pine trees dead from pine beetles. This has been ongoing for maybe the last decade. Speculation is that our winters have not been cold enough to kill the beetles and it's amazing we haven't yet had huge forest fires with all the dead wood.

It's all sort of scary.

We lived in Pitkin County for almost 20 years. The beetle kill isn't bad there...yet. Independence Pass and the Collegiate Range are still a barrier, but one really mild winter up high will probably turn that around. I've seen the fire prediciton maps for Summit and Clear Creek Counties and scary does not begin to describe it. There's talk that because there is so much fuel there that if a fire started after a dry season and during hot and windy conditions it could escalate to the point that there was no way to fight it.