Strange weather - Will it get our blooms and fruit?

Does anyone know of a dependable web site that keeps records of low temps for most cities in the USA? Specifically, I am trying to find a site that would give me the low temperature for the last 24 hours for Bowling Green, KY- my closest city with a population over $30k and which almost always has the exact same weather and temps as I do (Nashville is about the sae distance from me but strangely it is usually about 3 degrees warmer than me. Thanks kevin

Try this, the Natl Weather Service site out of Louisville. Select the State Summary button, and it should show Bowling Green. According to their data it was 27 this morning.

http://w2.weather.gov/climate/index.php?wfo=lmk

wundergound.com has that kind of data but it can be a little bit hard to find on their site.

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Here’s a Bowling Green link from WU:

https://www.wunderground.com/weather/us/ky/bowling-green

Now look at the name of that station in blue (under the city name in black) and see beside it where it says ‘Report’ and ‘Change’. Click Change.

Once that loads, you’ll see a map that you can manipulate and it has the weather stations near you with their current temps.

Click on one to choose a station, and then it will take you to a page (for your city again). On that page, click on that station name (under the city name in black). That’s the station you just chose on the map.

The page that comes up is where you see that station’s data, including min temp, etc. You have to scroll down for that part. There may be an easier way, but I don’t know it!

My temps are depressingly low already, but the forecast had them just sitting at nearly the same temp all night, so maybe it’s not as scary as it looks. It’s 26-27 right now :frowning: Forecast is 28 basically all night. Another nail biter! The last one, I think :slight_smile:

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Wether Undergound, Hitory section. It’s great.

This is what the last 45 days or so have looked like in my area. March has been colder than normal but look at February 19-24. Those 5 days will be the ones that have the lasgest effect on blooming in my area.

In fact, it was 1 year agao today that we had the consecutive nights in the mid teens during full bloom that toasted all of my fruit.

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Forecast of ten degrees Saturday night. So long, stone fruits of 2018.

Yep last March 15/16, 2017 low temps here in Clarksville, TN got to a low of 21 on both days. Zapped all my stone fruit (I didnt have much to begin with 1st and 2nd year trees. Fingers crossed.Looking out at the forecast the lowest temp up to March 29th is scheduled on March 20th for a low of 32 and cloudy.

Thank-you so much- both you and @Cafeaulait and @ztom for that great site. I must admit I have used weather underground before but sort of forgot about it. I’ll go now and see if I can find the records you guys mentioned, because the one you posted is EXACTLY what I was looking for.

I never trust my own thermometers. And I have had TERRIBLE luck with the wireless ones where the actual temperature measuring part is outside and sends the temperature into the display in the house. I think I’ve had 3 of those over the years. I don’t know if I’ve just been extremely unlucky or if all them are just junk, but all 3 of mine failed to work in less than a year (not due to battery). They would either die completely or send temperatures that made no sense (like 150 degrees F at night! ha). I confess that part of the problem was likely because I just bought the el Cheapo models at Walmart or tractor supply, so if I’d got a more expensive ones they may have worked better.

Staying with the topic of this thread: I haven’t much mention of damage reports from other growers here. Did any of you guys and gals get hit this week? Were your stone fruits blooming yet? Honestly, I cannot tell yet about mine. Almost all my stone fruits were in bloom or petal fall and it got down to 26 degrees. Also, there was a thick layer of frost/ice on my windshield when I got in my care at 6 30 am to go to work. So I’m pretty sure I got wiped out. But I have a hard time telling the extent of my damage until a few days have passed. I know people say you can look close-perhaps even with a magnifying glass- and if the center is damaged it will be black. But that test doesn’t seem to always hold true for me, at least not within about 2-3 days of being hit. On the 3rd day or later I can tell a lot better. But that is probably just my inexperience. Either way, I’ll know for sure this weekend but I suspect it will very, very bad news. If so, it will be my second year in a row to loose most of my fruit to a freeze. I can’t even call March 14 a LATE freeze for my area, but this year all my trees were insanely early (almost a whole MONTH!!!)

Good luck to the rest of you, and thanks again for answering my question.

BY THE WAY, let me take this opportunity to put in a good word for Contender Peach Trees. I’ve got somewhere around 20 varieties of peaches and nectarines, and contender is absolutely my latest bloomer. It is about 5-7 days beind most of my other peaches. 6 days may not sound like a lot, but I assure you it can be a lifetime- and I have the proof. Last year the only peaches and nects I got from my whole orchard were Contender. This year, the only peaches I have that still had closed (but very swollen) buds are my contenders, so it is more than possible that this year my contender trees will once again be the difference in me getting some homegrown peaches or not getting any. Not only that, but I think contender peaches are great tasting, they are highly productive, look good, are good sized fruit, etc. In other words, I think they are comparable in almost every way with most other peaches, so it seems like you really don’t have to sacrafice anything in exchange for getting a late blooming peach. But that is just my 2 cents. I’d be interested in knowing if peach gurus like @Olpea agree that contender is at least equal to a good, “average” peach, and whether others experience the same bloom lag time I have experienced (5-7 days)? This tends to be the peach I recommend most to everyday people who ask me what kind of peach to plant. (yes, I also give them the obligatory speech about peaches not being an easy fruit to grow, that they will have to spray different things at different times). I’d be interested in hearing if some of you think that is a good peach to suggest to the “uninitiated” (if the person is set on trying a peach. Otherwise I ALWAYS suggest pears).

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In my part of NC, most peaches and southern highbush blueberries are in full bloom. It hit 24 last night and 26 degrees several times last week. The low temperature normally occurs around daylight, so it does not last long. A major warm spell followed by a big freeze can be a problem in some years, but the problem seems to be getting more frequent.

I have learned not to make predictions about the amount of damage, but both the peaches and SHB normally do better than the charts indicate they should. The worst case scenario is a freeze in the peaches after fruit set which kills every single peach.

Contender with 1050 chill hours is always about a week behind my other peach blooms. It makes a full crop when most varieties do not. The NC State breeding program designed this peach to bypass frost damage in most years after the NC peach industry suffered multiple major crop failures in a row from freeze damage and eliminated quite a few commercial growers in my state.

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blueberrythrill - I am always interested in the varieties that do better with late frosts. What other varieties do you grow that do well with late frosts? I thought I saw in an old thread that you liked Winblo a lot (may be confused).

Thanks - Spud

Sorry to hear that :frowning: Hope it proves to be very wrong.

The temps keep staying cold here but not going down either … high 45 low 28 kind of thing for many days.

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Woke up this AM to about 38 degrees and it turns out we had a very light frost last night…this is unseasonably cold for this time of year…expecting it to go low 40’s upper 30’s again tonight before warming up for good…can’t imagine there was any damage, but I haven’t had a chance to check my trees since yesterday…

Spud

China Pearl (white) and Carolina Gold are two more high chill peaches that do well when a big frost occurs after a warming spell. I believe they are both around 1050 chill hours. Only a few peaches are available that require over 1000 chill hours as far as I know. I really like Winblo, but its only 800 chill hours. Oops - Add Challenger to the list, its another 1000 Chill Hour peach from NC State

Thanks for the news, not :smile:

I did not realize that the 10 F is sneaking in. In fact, Sat, Sun, Mon will be lows of 10, 12, 18. I just checked my apricots, many are at “tips separate”, some are more advanced to calyx red, some are only at bud swollen.

I hope all will not be lost. Too bad that the teen temp are three days in a row. Let’s hope for the best.

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Yep. I’ve been through this a number of years. I’m looking for varieties which taste good and still give a crop in marginal years common to your area and mine.

I read year after year of folks who lose peach crops. I’ve lost crops myself year after year of certain varieties. It’s depressing and disappointing, especially as a small commercial grower who many times has a half row or more of trees which are blank.

Certainly there are some weather conditions which wipe out all peaches, but so many times the weather wipes out only certain varieties.

I’m with you. Contender is a good quality peach, and very much more productive than, say, Loring in it’s window.

I’m forced to evaluate this stuff fairly closely and try to adust. In the last few years I’ve cut down lots of peach trees which don’t work.

I just planted almost 20 more trees yesterday of Challenger and Intrepid for some replacements. I don’t have enough experience with them to know if they will work, but what little experience I have with them is promising for the windows.

I cannot stand another summer with three apricots! Tippy, you know I have many mature trees and to lose so much fruit to late frosts is really getting to me. :crazy_face:

Your temp is usually not as harsh as ours.

Same result though.

At what stages are your apricots?

Mine are all small enough I just went ahead and covered them with some old tablecloth I have that i cut up and lightly tied around most everything. It was Perfect weather for 3 weeks or so that literally everything is in heavy Bud or bloom. I don’t believe keeping them covered a day or two can hurt? And i just figured better safe than sorry. We had freeze at 30 degrees last night. Albeit only about 5 hours and the same last Wednesday when I did the same…