I agree...

I was just thinking the same thing. So worried about all of my friends...

Make me shiver to see the amounts of snow and freezing temps.

PLEASE be careful... ;-)

Thanks for posting this Fredman

Laura

I hope that everybody is safe and will sail through it.
One thing is that this is not a growing season. The other thing is that snow is good insulation and protector from deep freezing cold.

Thanks for your kind thoughts of us in the northeast. Here in NJ the temps soared into the 50's last night with heavy rains. The snow cover is just about gone. Expecting low of 11F tonight! I can think of a few plants that I'm pushing the envelope with, zone-wise, that may be lost. Fingers crossed we don't lose heat/power. That would be worse than losing a few plants.

Jerseygirl, the forecast tonight for here is the same temp, 11 degrees on the FL border. The northern landscape is used to such temps, but there will be many losses where record low temps will occur in the south tonight.

Hope everyone stays warm indeed!

Thank you. It's 10 below here with wind gusts up to 30 mph. Supposedly wind chill temps from -30 to -40. My main gardening concern is for my roses in containers wintering over in an unheated shed. They did fine in the past few winters, but those were unusually mild. I also wonder how my small herb and garlic beds will fare, but otherwise, this is a time I am glad I do most of my gardening in containers.

Of course, the bigger concern is for the people and animals who must be outside at a time like this, including the road crews and emergency responders. The last time we had record breaking temperatures like this, Carolina wrens were decimated in this area.

We got to 14 below last night, the worst of it. Hope my peach buds survived! No matter they are small and I planned on stripping the fruit anyway. But not my cherries argh! They should be OK, it's been cold, and that preps them. Yeah it's dangerous out there! Be careful! My dog doesn't care, I have to watch him, he has no sense!
We have about 16 inches of snow, my 1 foot raised beds are buried.

Won't know about landscaping damage for a few months, record low temps all over the state, 15 here last night. Woke up to windows covered in ice on the inside. My house isn't built for this weather, under my feet is carpet, plywood, then outside air. It's about 40 degrees on the floor, 60 halfway up the wall, the bathroom is closed off & breath is visible in there.

We put blankets over our dog's house and put a heat lamp in it but never did see him go in there.

My Mom's house is much newer with insulation and she said the heat pump is running 7 degrees behind its' setting. (Set at 69, room is 62.)

It's a light price to pay for the rest of the great windows-open days here, but it feels pretty heavy today. Gotta keep joggin around the house... Dinner will be something that bakes in the oven for an hour!

How are you coping?

I've been wearing hoodie and scarf inside house for past 2 days but the worst is over. It's 22 now going down to 19 tonight. They're predicting 60 on Saturday. Crazy.
I can't even imagine what 40 on the floor is like.

Sounds like a plan! I slept with a hat on the past 2 nights. We lost power for about an hour last night, that didn't help. How can NJ and AL weather be so similar in January? - crazy!! Supposed to be warm here, but rainy Saturday. I feel so bad for those who aren't expecting any warmer air, hold tight up there!

Did anybody find the door Canada left open yet? Gotta get that closed...

Well at least most of my small container trees are either in an unheated garage or buried under about three feet of snow so these crazy sub-zero temps and wind chills won't bother them quite as much. I'm hoping the snow acts as a blanket to at least moderate the temps for the plants.

At one point the actual air temp here was -17F and wind chill was -45F. For zone 5 that's a bit much. According to the weather forecast I think the worst is over, at least for the time being. We have a lot more winter ahead of us!

TYG

WOW I really think of you guys. I follow it on the news every night, but I can imagine that is only a small portion of what is really going on. The weather is playing havoc in so many places around the globe.
Luckily we have been fortunate down here in NZ. We had record highs the last winter and this summer. In saying that winter isn't far away and with all this unpredicables who knows what can happen...!
Anybody knows what the cause of this "Polar Vortex" is?

According to Wikipedia, a polar vortex "is a persistent, large-scale cyclone located near either of a planet's geographical poles." Other planets have them as well as Earth. Polar vortexes were first discovered in 1853, and they hover near both poles year-round. They are bigger during winter and smaller during summer. And, apparently like other cyclones, there are big ones that can cause big problems and little ones that don't do us much harm. They can become distorted due to temperature changes and bring a blast of cold arctic air down from the poles to cause the kind of weather we've been having across the Midwest and eastern United States.

According to Wikipedia they usually span about 620 miles so this one is most unusual...;-(

Thanks for the concern fredman. We are now having a break in the polar cold. Temps have warmed up to nearly 40F today, which is about 40 or 50 degrees warmer than it was a few days ago. We're also having moderate to heavy rains. Good news is that it's melting much of our heavy snowpack. Bad news is that the ground is frozen so there's no place for the water and melted snow to go.

TYG