Changing Climate The Hot Topic During Meteorologist Jeff Ray's Visit To The Grapevine Garden Club

GRAPEVINE, Texas (CBSDFW.COM) - This week's Gardening 101 is about a talk I gave to the Grapevine Garden Club.

The club has been around since 1932, the talk I did on Tuesday, Sept. 28 was at their first meeting since the COVID-19 pandemic started.

My talk was centered on how the changing climate in North Texas is changing the way we garden.

The average temperature around most of the globe is getting warmer and DFW is no exception.

This warming trend manifests itself in several ways; from a longer growing season to bigger rain events to more extreme weather events.

The weather record for the Metroplex goes back to 1898.

Records are meant to be broken, but we've broken more than our fair share since the start of the new century.

Just look at the list below of what has happened just in the last ten years.

I shared with my fellow gardeners what I've been doing in my backyard to adjust to the new normal.

Plant selection becomes paramount, along with using shade and frost cloth to work around the hotter summers and longer growing season.

I you would like me to talk to your group on this subject I'd be honored to do so.

Please email me a request at jaray@cbs.com.

Because of my work schedule during the week, I have to stick to the Metroplex area.

Like so many difficult solutions, global warming has become more a political issue than a scientific one.

The evidence that it is happening is both overwhelming and conclusive.

What we don't know is what happens and when it happens over the next 100 years.

As I've been saying for 30 years, this is the mankind's greatest experiment, and everyone has skin in the game.

There are 7.7 billion people in the world as of 2020.

It requires a lot of land and favorable weather to feed them all.

Just like I try to do in my garden, we'll have to adjust to the changing weather the best we can.