Anytime you see a 1050mb high pressure over the plains in the USA in Jan…temps are going to be ugly cold. You’d have to go to Russia to find something like this.
The winter of 1899 was unusual in that in brought a lot of cold to the South, midwest, and Mid-Atlantic states but not so much to New England. I mean it was still plenty cold there, but not record-setting.
Got to 3° this morn, coldest day in almost three years. I turned the heat down to 62 before I went to bed (3am), and it still came on about every half hour.
Even tho the sun’s out, it’s still only 21, got the long johns and flannel lined jeans on today, watching some football. It might get to 0 tonight. Yikes.
Feel sorry for you guys in the Midwest, unbelievably cold. When it gets to -20, I imagine you have to worry about your trees surviving, especially if there’s any wind to go with it.
All of my fruit trees have seen -30 and survived. Keying on the most hardy varieties is important. I do a bit of zone pushing, but know that losing those trees is certainly possible.
Can’t deal with this 30 degree below normal temps. We got about an inch of snow on the ground. My daughter insisted on going outside and making a snow man. I hadn’t let them play outside because of the temps in teens. So I said yes today. My son (3.5 yrs) lasted 10 minutes outside and then went back in. My daughter (5yrs) wanted to finish her snowman. Snow on the ground isn’t really wet snowman material. It’s powdery and won’t stick together. So she decided to make a lying down snowman.
I was impressed how she wouldn’t run inside and instead happily wanted to finish her snowman.
(At the time I thought she’s nuts) ! Here is her creation.
IMG_4200|690x920
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Very fabulous and creative!
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Like most of you-many of whom have it much worse, I’m very worried about a lot of my trees, brambles, bushes, etc. We hit 2 degrees last night and are forecast to do so again tonight. That is the worst cold I’ve seen since I started growing fruit 5 years ago. What makes this even worse is that it is a prolonged brutal cold. We have gotten down to 0 and even below in my area in the past, but it is almost always just one night. This time the forecast is calling for 2 degree low temps several nights for a whole week. I’m mostly worried about my Asian persimmons and a couple other things that I knew were borderline in my area. Darn this weather!
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Went for a few mile run this evening and it was -2F … that is a first for me. Been itching to get back outside after being stuck inside.
Tonite running about 6F warmer then last night at this time…winds are westerly now…the GFS shows us going ABOVE freezing next Sunday (wowsers!)…
The cold should invade S Florida this week…even Miamians will need the insulated thongs later this week.
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We had -23F on the peach-tree temperature monitor, and -20F on my 5-in-1 weather station about 30 feet away this morning, 01/01/2018.
It has already been down to -19F tonight, and we have 10 hours before dawn. The wind picked up, though and mixed out the cold pocket in my yard, so now we are back up to -14F.
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Here I am feeling sorry for our area because we are almost zero for a few days! Seeing you and others makes me realize how much worse it can be. I would think -23 and some of the other reports I’ve seen would actually kill trees??? Good luck, everyone!
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Forecast to get down to 7F tonight here. Actually, because of Pierce’s disease, I would like to see it get colder than that. Maybe with the wind chill it will kill some of the pathogen. Don’t know how the cold will affect the grape vines that are already infected though.
The extended cold should help my Honeycrisp apple tree. Just hope it does not hurt my Sumner pecan.
The worst part is that Sumner tree that I want to keep warm is on the north side of my house in a cold pocket and the Honeycrisp tree is on the south side of the house where the sun can get to it easily. Oh well.
Yeah… I’m hoping not. Apples are likely fine, and we have snow on the ground, so roots should be OK.
I’m not sure about the peaches, especially the new ones I planted this spring. They were well dormant, thankfully. -23 is the lowest temperature I’ve had, but we did have about -22F or -20F two years ago.
A phage is available that halts Pierce’s disease. You’ll need a pesticide applicators license to obtain it from most suppliers.
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Years ago when we lived in Cedar Rapids, had a night in early Jan. hit -28. That fixed me, I moved to the tropics, Des Moines.
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Guess our 65F tomorrow is not looking so bad atm lol
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Heck no, I might harvest a few mandarins in a week!
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If it is a choice between limbs breaking and removing the leaves I would get them off with whatever means necessary. I still have a few stubborn leaves hanging on that refuse to easily strip off.
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-8.4
That’s a cold walk to the train station.
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A neighbor’s peach trees died a couple years ago after a spell around the -20s, but they were old and I think had borers.
Sweet (no pun intended lol). Our Navel’s are almost at prime, as well!
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