Just a little time spent with a globe and the Internet helped me find that my place on Earth here in Minneapolis, at about 45ยบ N latitude, is halfway between the equator and the North Pole! It's also pretty much at the center of the North American continent. That same Internet research showed me that I am at about the same latitude as: Portland, OR; Montreal, Quebec; Halifax, Nova Scotia; Bordeaux, France; Venice, Italy; Belgrade, Yugoslavia; the Transylvania highlands where Dracula is said to have roamed and a Mongolian weather station at about 10,000 feet in the Himalayas. The gardening climate in each of these places is vastly different. Those near water have more moderate climates than mine, some very mild indeed. It rarely drops below freezing in Venice, Italy. And, while I couldn't find highs and lows for Bordeaux, France, the average January temperature is 42.1 degrees. That's an average of the highs and lows in that month. In Venice that same average is 36.3 degrees, so it must be milder yet in Bordeaux.
By contrast, London, England, whose gardening climate is one I envy, has a January average temperature of 39.6 degrees while my zone 4a climate averages 11.8 degrees in January. When you consider that London's latitude is 51 degrees North, that is the equivalent of 414 miles north of Minneapolis!
I decided that there must some equity here somewhere, so I turned the globe upside down to look for zone 4 climate in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Argentina or somewhere. Maybe our summer is their winter, but there should be somewhere down under that would feel like home. Shouldn't there? No way! Most of the Earth's dry real estate is located in the Northern Hemisphere and so the oceans' moderating influence gives our southern neighbors much warmer climates than we have. At 45 degrees South latitude nearly all the major land masses are closer to the equator - the equivalent of "south" of Minneapolis. The closest I could come was Comodoro Rivadavia, Argentina. It is far down the coast from Buenos Aires, but still its July average temperature (corresponding to January here) is 43.9 degrees. That's warmer than Bordeaux. I checked out Stanley in the Falkland Islands at 51 degrees South latitude. That's puts them at the mirror place on the globe from London. Their midwinter low temperature averages 35.6 degrees without the Gulf Stream that warms the British Isles. Christchurch, New Zealand at 43 degrees South latitude has a winter low average temperature of 42.3 degrees. Their average summer temperature is only 61.7 degrees, too.
Go To Page: 1 2
