About Plant Climate Map
Plant Climate Map shows two independently published classifications together at a selected point: Köppen–Geiger seasonal climate and USDA Plant Hardiness winter cold. A Plant Climate Profile, such as Cfa · 7b, preserves both labels. It is not a new classification or a plant-suitability score.
How to read a Plant Climate Profile
- Köppen–Geiger describes seasonal temperature and precipitation. In an illustrative point profile of Cfa · 7b, Cfa means temperate, no dry season, hot summer.
- USDA Plant Hardiness describes the average annual extreme minimum temperature: the average of each year's coldest temperature. The 7b half-zone spans 5 to 10°F; each half-zone covers a 5°F interval.
Two points can share a hardiness half-zone while having different seasonal climates, or share a Köppen class while differing in winter cold. Neither label, alone or together, predicts whether a particular plant will thrive.
Coverage and search
This release covers the 48 contiguous United States. Alaska, Hawaii and U.S. territories are outside its coverage.
Tap a point on the map or search for a place or county. Place results select Census representative points: the result describes that point, not the whole city or town. County results outline an area and ask you to select a point within it. A county can contain several profiles and is not assigned a single profile. Street addresses, ZIP codes and arbitrary landmarks are not supported.
How the map uses the grids
A selected coordinate is looked up independently in each source's native grid. The grids have different origins, so the two cells need not line up. Results do not change with map zoom. Native cell classes are stored with lossless run-length encoding; no interpolation or nearby-cell gap filling is used for point results.
The map display is a derived visualization, clipped to generalized state boundaries, tiled and recolored. At overview zooms it uses generalized categorical samples, which can omit small regions. Zooming in shows more display detail; the selected-point lookup continues to read the original source cells. Stepped cell boundaries are expected.
The Explore action highlights the intersection of the selected Köppen class and USDA half-zone. Sharing both labels does not establish that two points are equally suitable for a plant.
Data sources and editions
The two climate layers use the historical 1991–2020 period. The dates below identify source editions and publication dates, rather than current weather or dates of access.
- Beck et al. Köppen–Geiger dataset — V3 product, Figshare item 21789074, version 2, published 14 January 2026. This map uses the historical 1991–2020 layer,
1991_2020/koppen_geiger_0p00833333.tif, at 30 arc-seconds in EPSG:4326. Dataset licensed under CC BY 4.0. Scientific reference: Beck et al. (2023), Scientific Data 10, 724. - 2023 USDA Plant Hardiness GIS data — USDA Agricultural Research Service / PRISM Group, Oregon State University. The 1991–2020 average annual extreme minimum temperatures come from the official Fahrenheit grid at 30 arc-seconds (approximately 800 m). OSU owns the GIS data. This app derives half-zones in 5°F intervals.
- U.S. Census Bureau (2024) — 1:500,000 cartographic state/county boundaries and Gazetteer place/county representative points. Basemap © OpenStreetMap contributors, ODbL.
Plant hardiness information is derived from the 2023 USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map. This combined visualization is not an official USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map. The USDA layer is a modified, clipped and recolored derivative. Under the published USDA/OSU terms, this disclaimer is displayed prominently and agency logos are omitted. No endorsement is implied. Plant Climate Map is an independent project and is not affiliated with USDA, ARS, OSU or the U.S. Census Bureau.
No-data and geographic limits
Water and source land-mask gaps can have no classification in one or both datasets. Generalized state and shoreline clipping can also exclude small islands and coastal or boundary locations. Where the map shows source no-data in neutral gray with dashed edges, it assigns no climate. No nearby value is substituted. A failed data request is reported separately from a source cell with no data.
Grid cells describe regional conditions rather than an individual yard. Elevation, slope and aspect, urban heat, wind exposure, soil, drainage, sunlight, moisture and irrigation, pests and disease, and yard-scale microclimate can differ within a cell. The map's notice of differing hardiness cells within roughly 800 m is a proximity check, not a statistical confidence interval.
These historical classifications provide no frost dates, weather forecast, climate-change forecast or guarantee of plant survival.
Offline map
The map can be saved through “Use this map offline” in its About & sources dialog. This separate About page is not part of the offline snapshot. The in-map dialog includes source notes and remains available with a saved offline map.
Support the project
Plant Climate Map is free to use, with no account and no paywall. If it has been useful to you, you can optionally support Plant Climate Map on Ko-fi . Support is entirely voluntary and never required to use the map.
Contact & feedback
Found a problem or have feedback — incorrect map behavior, an accessibility issue, a broken link, or anything else? Email contact@plantclimatemap.org.
Spotted a climate-data error at a specific location? Email corrections@plantclimatemap.org with the place and what looks wrong.