North American Hardiness Zones
Based on the average annual minimum temperature for a given location, the USDA map provides an easy guideline for categorizing locations suitable for winter survival of a rated plant in an "average" winter. Since temperatures in the non-coastal-adjacent areas of the continent rarely present a consistent experience from year to year, and occasionally present a major—and often agriculturally devastating—deviation from the average minimum, the map has limitations for much of the country as a basis for using with long-term reliability, at least in areas close to the margin of a plant's rated hardiness-zone.
The USDA first issued its standardized hardiness zone map in 1960, and revised it in 1965. A new map was issued in 1990, based on U.S. and Canadian data from 1974 through 1986 (and 1971–1984 for Mexico). The 1990-issue map was based on nearly double the number of stations, and it divided the temperature zones into five-degree a/b zones for greater accuracy. This revised map identified many areas as colder than did the 1960 map, due chiefly to a number of severely colder winters in the central and eastern U.S. in the 1974–1986 data-gathering period, as opposed to the mid-20th century data-sampling period used in the 1960 map.
The 1990 map shows 10 different zones, each of which represents an area of winter hardiness for the plants of agriculture and the natural landscape. The USDA introduced zone 11, representing areas that have average annual minimum temperatures above 40 °F (4.4 °C) and that are therefore essentially frost-free.
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