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Comment by awalton | Hacker News Reader

> Do Americans really have no vegetables in winter ?

Here in America we suffer from this thing called "climate", which causes weather-changing seasons to happen, which makes the northern parts of the country like New York into desolate wastelands of snow and ice and cold. (I know, this must be tough to understand for someone in Europe with its much more mild maritime and Mediterranean climate, of which we are intensely jealous, especially during those winter months.)

This article is specifically talking about locally produced crops; during the winter, Americans get their vegetables from refrigerated storage or from the south. Southern California, Texas, Florida and Latin America are huge producers during the winter months, but other states also produce some amounts of winter hardy crops.

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They have plenty of climate in Europe -- they just haven't become reliant on a single state that's going to be in extreme drought for at least the next decade for all their produce during the winter months. See, for example, Magnus Nilsson's talk at Google regarding how he produces nearly all his own vegetables at his restaurant in northern Sweden: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FEMdhX3gtCY

I think you're hinting about the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, which is associated with drier weather in California (this makes sense intuitively, since a cooler Pacific ocean near California means less energy to evaporate sea water, which means less moisture in the air, which means less rain).

This oscillation in northern Pacific sea surface temperatures has a frequency of 30-50 years, so we'll probably be in the cool/dry phase for some time.

However, given the variable nature of climate and a host of other oscillations and trends that are occurring at the same time, it's irresponsible to forecast "extreme drought for at least the next decade" based on this single signal. For example, forecasters are predicting El Niño this fall, which is a (generally) stronger signal than the PDO, and is statistically associated with wetter weather in California.

You're definitely correct in worrying about the water situation in California, though. Population pressures, groundwater depletion, and climate effects all point to significant water resource pressure for the state in the foreseeable future. This will translate into higher food prices, as farming is a major use of water in the state.

It'll be interesting to see whether the drought impacts Californians as much as the rest of the country. Our drought is really, really bad but California is one of the wealthier states with the largest population and an absurd share of the United Stats' agricultural production [1]. With a lot of our industrial meat production backed by corn from other states, our exports might suffer more than total agricultural production (18.8 out of >45 billion dollars)

[1] http://www.cdfa.ca.gov/statistics/

Come try the "mild, maritime and Mediterranean climate" of mid-winter Scandinavia sometime. I've personally enjoyed -36 deg C coupled with a brisk sea breeze in Helsinki, and up in Lapland it's a toasty -50 deg C every now and then.

As a Finn I've found it remarkable that very few have ever realised just how far north the country is. The southernmost tip of the country is roughly on the same latitude as Anchorage.

The rest of the country is then, naturally, on the same levels as most of Alaska or Yukon.

That will be why "baltic" is used as a slang term here in the UK for "mild maritime and Mediterranean climate" :-)

It's mild for the latitude. Consider that Minnesota gets those temperatures as well at the 45th parallel. That's with over 8 hours of daylight on the winter solstice.

We grow lots of our winter produce in hydroponics under artificial lights.

People campaign against flying in stuff like aubergines from Isreal but it is less energy intensive than the tomatoes they have with it.

In chicago we get plenty of veg even in the middle of winter (granted it's through use of greenhouses, hoop houses, etc.). Beyond that you can essentially grow a good amount of stuff until the ground freezes (unless you use some of the newer ground insulation methods) especially tubers, etc.

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