How is your weather? (Part 1)

Inches of rainfall is a surface measure, not a volume. For example, comparable to inches accumulated on the surface of a water-bound reservoir.

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Iā€™m not disputing that, I was just wondering what the context was in regards to the thread. I suppose you were responding to someone else?

Yesterday it misted off and on, then towards the evening increased to rainfall. In total we received 0.58". Yippee!

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Computing ā€“ of course! For example my rainfall yesterday resulted in delivery of about 15 gallons per fruit tree basin.

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OK, gotcha.

Here in the Ohio River Monsoon Belt, we arenā€™t as excited about possible rain. This is our fourth anniversary being here, and I can count on one hand the amount of times weā€™ve had add supplemental water to any of our gardensā€¦

Weā€™re supposed to get another ā€œdustingā€ of snow tonight, but after their miss yesterday, Iā€™m expecting anything from a sprinkle of rain to half a foot of snow. Soā€¦

My trees will be here tomorrow, doubt Iā€™ll have a chance to plant them then. But, we might get lucky and not get anything bad tonight.

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blahā€¦the heatwave for me looks like a dud now ā€¦models the last few days have really dropped the heatā€¦ugh. 40Fsā€¦maybe low 50Fs by the weekendā€¦but raindrops a concern.

Another nuisance snow overnight, less than an inch. Ground is mushy again, I hope this is it for frozen precip for now. But, the sunā€™s out and 43, so the snow will be gone later today.

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Sunny and 40 by the weekend. Time to break out the shorts and flipflops

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in the mid 30ā€™s but another ft. of wet snow tom. night! snows up to the windows as it is! be june before i see the garden. :frowning:

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I got about the same here. I havenā€™t seen you mention the stage of your trees, Bob. Are your stone fruits blooming yet? Are you guys expected to get down to 25 tomorrow nights like we are? You expecting lots of damage?

Hello. Apples look still asleep, some of the pears are showing a few green sprouts, prob leaf buds. The peaches seem to be stalled at the green calyx stage, with a little bit of pink showing, so far from full bloom. This cold spell seems to have slowed them down a bit. Our lone wild plum has multiple green buds as well. The old tart cherry trees still look asleep also.

The peaches are probably still too small to produce many fruit this year though. The biggest one is only 4ft tall.

The snow has pretty much melted off, but thereā€™s a brisk north wind, tempā€™s about 50 now. Itā€™s supposed to get to 25 tomorrow night, after that. a gradual warmup is expected later in the week, might see 60 on Friday. Then a bit cooler next week. I donā€™t think the peaches are far enough along to be worried about right now. Teens maybe, but not 25, and we tend to be a bit warmer than forecasted, being on a hillside helps with that.

Your trees might make it, it may not get as cold as they say. It seems theyā€™re blooming really early this year, did they bloom in March last year? Even if they do survive this freeze, those killer freezes in April we usually get would be a bigger concern.

That is really surprising to me that our trees are so far apart considering how close we are (just a few hours by car, practically the same state since Iā€™m only 2 miles from KY). Almost all of my peaches are blooming, my pears are within a day or two and a few blooms already are out. Several plums and pluots are past full bloom and already dropping petals. one is almost at shuck split. Only apples and persimmons are still fast asleep. Thats a big difference from you just described!

Yes, all my trees are WAY ahead this year. I mean CRAZY early. about 3 weeks to a full month ahead of past years. Iā€™ve thought alot about why but its all guess work. We had a very long, cold winter and havenā€™t had a real warm streak/indian summer or anything. So it just makes no sense. But mother nature is tricky and complicated.

Donā€™t write off 4 foot peach trees. Iā€™ve had some 4 footers that produced a surprisingly large amount of peaches! :slight_smile:

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A long cold winter in your area means lots of chilling early, like last fall. So many of those trees were fully chilled in 2017. Any warmth after that wakes them up. Two and a half months is a long time to accumulate the warmth needed to bring on bloom.

You are like most southern locations left hoping for the perfect winter. You need a warm Nov and Dec and then cold the first three months of the yr. In Amarillo I had about 3 good winters in 30 yrs. I havenā€™t had a good one yet in Alpine after 14 yrs.

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Thanks so much for clearing that up, fruitnut. I sort of thought that, but then again so many of my trees have such low chill hour requirements that I felt like they almost always (every year) meet them by January, so its hard to see why they would be so much earlier this year in light of the fact that we havenā€™t had many warm days/Indian summer weather. But we did have about 3 days at the end of January that were really warm, so I guess that was enough to get all the trees with chill hours met to start waking up.

meaning ā€¦
< 150 ?
< 300 ?
< 500 ?

Good point, I should be more specific. And I donā€™t have a big list of all my trees. But I just remember having looked up several of my pluots and some plums and apricots and a lot of them were in the 300-400ā€™s range. But that isnā€™t a very scientific analysis!

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The really low chill stone fruits arenā€™t well adapted except in nearly freeze free climates. The ones that come to mind are FL, the gulf coast, south Texas, low elevations in AZ, and low elevations in CA. You arenā€™t in the deep south. You need 500 hr and up material.

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Well, Paducah is also in the same state, but itā€™s quite different climate wise. It gets quite cold here, especially this year, and our warm spell didnā€™t last as long as yours may have. Fruitnut makes a good point, once that extra long cold period ended, the trees prob donā€™t need much warmth to wake up.

Sure hope so! It would be a nice surprise to get any peaches this year.

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Yeah, chill all the way out

And glancing out the window just now, Iā€™m seeing snowflakes

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