The Sun is Killing Me: Hottest Summer Ever! And That's No Horse Pucky!

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Hottest Summer Ever! And That's No Horse Pucky!

It has been the hottest summer ever recorded in Austin this Summer. According to KVUE news, the Meteorological Summer ended on August 31st (it runs June 1st through August 31st) and the 2009 Average Temp was 89.1 degrees (avg of day and night temps) That is 2.4 degrees hotter than the previous record:

HOTTEST SUMMER EVER RECORDED IN AUSTIN (Camp Mabry)

1) 2009 Average Temp 89.1 degrees
2) 2008 Average Temp 86.7 degrees
3) 1980 Average Temp 86.2 degrees
4) 1923 Average Temp 86.1 degrees
5) 2006 Average Temp 85.8 degrees

(Notice how 3 of the top 5 have been in the last 5 years? This trend doesn't portend well for my garden. Uck.)

Those red boxed ones are new records highs for those days.

The last week of August has had temps in the mid-90's thanks to hurricane Jimena off of baja california that is spinning off high clouds in our general direction.

No comments:

Zone What?

Seattle to Olympia is Gardening Hardiness Zone 8.

Zone 8: -12 to -7 C (10 to 20 F)

Austin is Gardening Hardiness Zone 8-9

Zone 8: -12 to -7 C (10 to 20 F)
Zone 9: -7 to -1 C (20 to 30 F)

The USDA map was updated this year - 2012. Some zones have shifted from the previous version.

See the current map here:

http://www.usna.usda.gov/Hardzone/ushzmap.html

Although both Austin and Seattle are in similiar zone hardiness, their climates could not be more different! Temps top out in the 80's in the summer in Seattle, where in Austin they can top 110 and stay in the 100's for months on end. The same plants that enjoy the Seattle maritime climate will fry in a second in the semi-desert that is Central Texas.

Learn about the heat zone map here:

http://www.ahs.org/publications/heat_zone_map.htm

Check out the AHS Heat Zone map here:

http://www.ahs.org/pdfs/05_heat_map.pdf

Past Garden Quotes of the Month

"The fair-weather gardener, who will do nothing except when the wind and weather and everything else are favorable, is never master of his craft."-- Henry Ellacombe
"The trouble with gardening is that it does not remain an avocation. It becomes an obsession." -- Phyllis McGinley
"The way of cultivation is not easy. He who plants a garden plants happiness." --Chinese Proverb
"A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in." --Greek proverb
'Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.' - Albert Einstein
"Unemployment is capitalism's way of getting you to plant a garden." ~Orson Scott Card
"I never had any other desire so strong, and so like to covetousness, as that one which I have had always, that I might be master at last of a small house and a large Garden." ~Abraham Cowley, The Garden, 1666
"A weed is but an unloved flower." ~ Ella Wheeler Wilcox
"Last night, there came a frost, which has done great damage to my garden.... It is sad that Nature will play such tricks on us poor mortals, inviting us with sunny smiles to confide in her, and then, when we are entirely within her power, striking us to the heart." ~Nathaniel Hawthorne, The American Notebookse
"Half the interest of a garden is the constant exercise of the imagination." ~Mrs. C.W. Earle, Pot-Pourri from a Surrey Garden, 1897 (Thanks, Jessica)
"When one of my plants dies, I die a little inside, too." ~Linda Solegato
"In gardens, beauty is a by-product. The main business is sex and death." ~Sam Llewelyn
"Plant carrots in January and you'll never have to eat carrots." ~Author Unknown