Things like this make me want to install some kind of heaters near my most prized plants. The power cost would be pretty high, and they wouldn't be sufficient to make it through the winter or anything, but they might allow us to weather a night or two of freezing temperatures in the early spring.

You can do this with soil heating cables and plant frost covers.

Our problem during winter storm Uri is that the Texas electrical grid almost failed and we had to power for nearly a week in subfreezing temps.

Yeah... Ok, my average temperature increased by %4.x percent, but my variance increased by quite a bit more than that. The assumptions underlying the growing zone approximation were never great ones, but I find the whole idea largely irrelevant now. Cold snaps a good ten degrees below normal have now repeatedly killed established natives (as in you could find them in local wildlife preserves). And the long dry spells averaging what used to be the yearly high, now kill plants adapted to live in actual deserts. Is it wrong that part of me is fascinated to see what comes next?

> my average temperature increased by %4.x percent

Can you do that with temperatures not in kelvin (with true zero)?

you can do what you want but it doesn't make it meaningful

It's not more meaningful in Kelvin. 1 to 4 is a 300% increase and so is 200 to 800. So hearing 300% tells you absolutely nothing, without the added context of "from the previous average temperature of the region".

My point is that a 4% increase in numbers on a scale where zero does not equate tot he total absence is not actually 4% hotter.

Yes, it is. Percentages don't mean anything in temperature unless it is Kelvin where 0 is truly 0.

1 to 4 degrees Celsius is not a 300% increase in anything but the integer representing temp. Try that in Fahrenheit or with a negative value.

Edit: I think I initially missed your point that percentages are kind of silly to use anyway.

> Percentages don’t mean anything in temperature unless it is Kelvin where 0 is truly 0.

Well, technically any absolute scale: Kelvin is the most common, but Rankine has the same feature. (It just uses Fahrenheit-sized degrees instead of Celsius-sized.)

I wondered if there might be others but left it up to you to correct me. :)