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I think it's odd that a lot of posters think that some cold nights during the fall and winter months automatically disqualifies a place from subtropical classification.
I'm not sure who's trying to disqualify the US South from being subtropical. (Disqualify Washington DC and New York City? Yes, but those are differentthreads).
What we're trying to do is refute are claims like the following:
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Those single digit cold snaps in the South only occurred due to the Cold Epoch being at peak strength.
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Cold snaps in the South are no more severe than what is seen in other subtropical climates.
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Only the far inland parts of the South exhibit the conditions you describe.
I personally am also trying to figure out how certain posters dismiss the obvious winter lows as being irrelevant and attribute them to some ephemeral "cold epoch" without providing a shred of evidence that such a things ever actually existed.
While I agree that most of the South has far too cold records and cold snaps in comparison to their averages, I also think most of the South has a far superior climate to any oceanic climate because the cold snaps ARE short-lived. A lot easier to take a few bone chilling windy subfreezing days when you know next week is going to be sunny and in the 70s. Much better than pesky, damp, and chilly overcast 40s for months on end. So the South does have its good points as a reasonable sunny and warm climate as the original point the OP might make. As for as those "cold epochs" causing these drastic temperature swings, extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence.
Jan 2014 was 3F below average in Houston while last winter was well above average in London. I wonder how London would compare to Houston if that was switched.
So what that Houston got more nights below 32F in a colder than avg winter. Why don't you go find streetviews in London that look like these random places around Houston area.
Queen palm in Houston. Queen palms in London burbs?
More Queen palms in Houston burbs.
Here if the current forecast for Houston. This would be a record breaking forecast for London on the eve of December. Forecast calls for partly sunny and 77F on November 30th. How often does London reach 77F on November 30th? Lol, they can barely manage that temp outside of the three summer months.
This constant harping about how bizarre it is for places like Houston to get as cold as they do compared to that salubrious London climate gets old. London is cool to cold for most of the year, and their summer is weak. They may be in a fake 9a zone, but they look nothing like a zone 9a in the southern US due to the utter lack of any real heat there throughout the entire year there.
Heck even a zone 8a in the US like Las Cruces NM grows palms more impressive than London.
YoUaReAtWaT or whatever his name is is clearly a troll & a rude one at that...
He/she/it provides NO evidence at all, simply stating guff about "cold epochs" that have affected the entire world (apart from the US South of course) & claiming that all other sub-tropical type climates have seen similar or lower record low temperatures than the US South, despite NO EVIDENCE at all
And he has the nerve to call everyone else stupid amateur climatologists
There is little point in making claims about climates from thousands or millions of years ago, heck even what is now southern England had a tropical climate back then, with fossils of palms & cycads being found. The ENTIRE WORLD had a different climate
All we can go on is weather records from recent history & England has some of the oldest weather records in the world & many other countries have records going back well over 100 years. So please stop with all this nonsense & only use reliable factual weather records, not what you think happened in the distant past ******* idiot.
YoUaReAtWaT or whatever his name is is clearly a troll & a rude one at that...
He/she/it provides NO evidence at all, simply stating guff about "cold epochs" that have affected the entire world (apart from the US South of course) & claiming that all other sub-tropical type climates have seen similar or lower record low temperatures than the US South, despite NO EVIDENCE at all
And he has the nerve to call everyone else stupid amateur climatologists
There is little point in making claims about climates from thousands or millions of years ago, heck even what is now southern England had a tropical climate back then, with fossils of palms & cycads being found. The ENTIRE WORLD had a different climate
All we can go on is weather records from recent history & England has some of the oldest weather records in the world & many other countries have records going back well over 100 years. So please stop with all this nonsense & only use reliable factual weather records, not what you think happened in the distant past ******* idiot.
Houston did get a somewhat long-lasting cold wave in December 1983. 10 consecutive days that failed to get above 46 F. The first week of January however, it did reach 70 F.
Houston did get a somewhat long-lasting cold wave in December 1983. 10 consecutive days that failed to get above 46 F. The first week of January however, it did reach 70 F.
How often and by how much do temps "swing all over the place"? I posted for three cities how often over a 30 yr period temps differ from the mean by 5F, 10F, and 15F.
As shown, Florida varies the least, but even Philadelphia and Charleston have 90% and 87% of winter days respectively where the min avg temp varies less than 15F plus or minus. I think every winter we get swings, but it is not as if temps just keep going 15F plus and minus all winter. That is not borne out by the averages. Maybe in an extreme winter, but there is no way this is borne out by the average number of days with those differences each winter averaged over 30 years.
It is quite clear that temperatures swing all over the place during the winter based on the standard deviation in the many locations in the south. I do agree that Florida is more stable, I never said otherwise, though the panhandle is the least stable of the entire state since it's farther north.
You yourself have said averages don't tell the whole story. They definitely don't in the case of the south with the extreme cold snaps and deviations from average they experience.
The majority of winter may be close to average, but that doesn't take away from the wild swings that do occur 10-20% of the time (whatever the percentages are). It's just like where I live in the summer...on average they're pretty benign, but those few weeks of extremely humid and hot weather tend to stand out.
YoUaReAtWaT or whatever his name is is clearly a troll & a rude one at that...
He/she/it provides NO evidence at all, simply stating guff about "cold epochs" that have affected the entire world (apart from the US South of course) & claiming that all other sub-tropical type climates have seen similar or lower record low temperatures than the US South, despite NO EVIDENCE at all
And he has the nerve to call everyone else stupid amateur climatologists
There is little point in making claims about climates from thousands or millions of years ago, heck even what is now southern England had a tropical climate back then, with fossils of palms & cycads being found. The ENTIRE WORLD had a different climate
All we can go on is weather records from recent history & England has some of the oldest weather records in the world & many other countries have records going back well over 100 years. So please stop with all this nonsense & only use reliable factual weather records, not what you think happened in the distant past ******* idiot.
You have to ignore this cold epoch thing, and the exaggeration about what grows in the South. Trust me, I listen to the local gardening shows from around the country from podcasts. Mangoes grow in the desert SW, south FL, Hawaii and Puerto Rico, and no where in the rest of the country. No one is growing mangoes in Charelston or Mobile or Jacksonville or Houston. They don't live. People there grow citrus and bananas for backyard consumption.
These exaggerated posts about "paradise" are to be laughed off. No where in the US is paradise trust me.
Also, in regards to London I may have exaggerated a little in my last post. London does not have a weak summer, particularly given the latitude. Mid 70's temps for most of the summer is decent. But imo only, the other 8 months of the year are cool to cold. Not biting arctic cold that we get, but cold none the less. London and the coastal mild parts of the UK are indeed impressive for the subtropical palms that can long term survive there. US gardening experts note that all the time. Heck even when I visited in January London looked more garden like than here.
But to somehow claim that because Houston gets more 32F nights than London makes it somehow less of subtropical climate just seems ludicrous to me.
It does seem true though that London is in a heat island, while Houston is in a much more widespread 9a climate.
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******* idiot.
