Fruitnut,

The GFS weather model is predicting a powerful storm that could impact Texas on the 12th, 2014.

It might impact Southern California, first. However, at this point, its track is uncertain because it is a cut-off low. At this point, looks like it will take Southern track mostly affecting the San Diego area, then it will move towards Arizona, later it will strengthen right above the Texas Area. It will keep strengthening as it moves towards the Southeastern states. By the 13th�"the 14th, the storm could create blizzard conditions on the Eastern states.

Tuesday the high will be -1F in SE MI . This is indeed the coldest air in many years here.

HI, I have Kriston,I hope thats right, cherry that has taken 30 below 0 and still had flowers last spring. the snow on may 22 did kill the flowers. Its a sweet cherry. Rex.

Drew51's ignorance on this issue is astounding.

A couple cold days is nothing but anectdotal observation. Almost entirely all of what he wrote shoes a vast lack of understanding for basic scientific principles and a vast lack of understanding for basic physics.

We're all worse off for having read his posts.

Now, can we please stop, and get back to the topic at hand.

I think my peaches are toast...but maybe the sweet cherries will make it...we'll find out soon enough. Also think the apricots will be ok, at least some of them. Going to be an interesting spring. Might cover a small nectarine tree i have out back (protected by the house to the north)...

{{gwi:126432}}

I couldn't find straw to mulch my strawberries with this year, so just threw my usual pine branches over the established bed. Since I didn't renovate, I'm hoping the thick growth will help - I'll just see what comes back in the spring. I did transplant some, covered the new transplants with 2 layers of burlap bags (so 4 layers), hope that will be enough but no big loss - I can always transplant more.

I too was worried about the TC blackberries, I covered all the canes with at least 1 layer of burlap bags, tried to overlap so no holes. Raspberries are on their own. I covered 5 out of the 6 blueberries that we put in 2012 with buckets, the 6th was too large, hope not too much of a problem with record-breaking cold (due to break 1981 record of -9 tonight) and not much snow (about 7"?) to insulate. I hope my great-uncle's established patch and our wild BB survive.

oldvt, the really ignorant part is that water vapor is more greenhouse causing than carbon dioxide. Of course in the lab water absorbs infrared radiation better than CO2 (few molecules absorb infrared radiation better than H2O, and none of those that are common in the atmosphere, including methane). But water also forms clouds which have a significant albedo (reflection of radiation into space), so significant that increasing cloud cover is seen as a mitigation or solution of GW. Transparent gases do not.

Oh Frank I hope your peaches are not toast! Mine were last year, and the thought of a second summer in a row without my own peaches truly stinks! Ugh, the white stuff sure is pretty but not the cold for my peach buds. Its 15 degrees F here which is fine now. Mrs. G

Peaches are weird, anyway.

In Ohio, I had them set a crop after -16F then a few years later, fail to even bloom after a rather benign -7F. There are a lot of factors involved - warm spells before the cold snap reduce hardiness, and it seems anecdotally at least that peaches are hardier towards early-winter cold snaps than later in winter.

"When is comes to minus degrees of freezing does the number include wind chill factor?"

Mrs. G,

In general wind chill doesn't affect bud survival. Wind chill affects warm blooded animals because it lowers our temperature faster.

Plants are always the same as the outside temp (unless the sun is shining on them) so wind doesn't matter. There are some cases were drying winds can desiccate plant tissues, but that's different than cold killing them.

Below is a link where some dormant bud hardiness testing was done on a few peach cultivars. According to Colorado State, bud kill started at around -5F.

As Hairmetal suggests, degree of dormancy has is a big factor in hardiness.

Also as the article suggests, varietal variation and cultural practices can also affect hardiness.

Fruitmaven,

I've grown TC blackberry for quite a few years. I get some winter kill at 0F.

As I mentioned earlier, the winter before last, it got down to -8 here and we still had a crop of TC. There have been years it didn't get quite as cold but still lost practically the whole crop of TC.

I understand Chester is quite a bit hardier. There is a U-pick blackberry patch about 10 miles from me. The owner planted all Chester because of the hardiness. I've tasted the berries and unfortunately they aren't near as sweet as TC.

Here is a link that might be useful: Fruit bud cold hardiness - Colorado State

Thanks Olpea. Also after checking the temps for Monday it looks like Wisconsin, Illinois, Minn, Iowa and MO are getting clobbered with the coldest air. -52 F in certain areas. That is cold! Will these temperatures kill all tree fruit? Mrs. G

Like many of you, I'm very worried about the coming cold (expected low of 2 degrees F here in TN!). The following chart contains some great information about what we might can expect for each type of fruit based on the temperature we get to. Good luck everyone! (I haven't figured out how to get links to work on here so you'll have to copy/cut and paste this into your browser's address bar)

http://www.hrt.msu.edu/faculty/langg/Fruit_Bud_Hardiness.html

Looks like the temp is going to dip down to -13F tonight. I will be busy wrapping up a bunch of 1 to 2 yrs old Kakis, pomegranates,and figs.

Tony

can some of you put some holiday lights on 1 or 2 trees and throw a cover over it all to save a few special trees. It's sad to think of trees getting killed

I really hope we get the rain for So. CA Anything at all would be nice. Any possibility of rain has stayed in San Francisco or higher. Our last chance to get some, it rained over the ocean and never came over the land. I'm worried that we are going to see many old trees die if we have another dry year. My neighbor had bad sunburn on his fruit trees last year and many struggled in the heat and dry conditions. Beetles are killing off trees that are trying to hang on. A good rain would be a lifesaver for many trees around here.

Yeah kitty. That link I posted above is now 404 "not found" so maybe they are updating.

I live in Orange County and it seems the rain always goes a little south or north or just fizzles once it reaches shore. But when it rains, IT REALLy rains. Just need a few goods months and things will start to shape up!

On topic, Im really starting to worry about all this cold air but mother nature can be tricky sometimes. It also doesnt help that there is so much water vapor and other crap in the atmosphere but who knows really how much of anything affects our weather. I would love to live 1000 years ago to see what it is like without any crap in the air (forget about the "mini ice age and other natural phenomena).

Drought used to drive me completely batty when I lived in CA. As a life long, full time grower, water restrictions are a nightmare. Here in NY if we go a month without rain the media starts turning up the hysteria about drought. The relatively reliable precip is one of the things I love about the weather here.

I still have to sometimes struggle with my inadequate well during dry periods, but I've never run out of essential water. CA seems to be struggling with drought nearly half the time, except along the northern coast.

So you see and admit the media hype/hysteria over false issues in this case drought but fail to see it over man made global warming? Interesting.

Calling for 27 here Tuesday morning.......I know that is not cold for those in the north but for central Florida it is brutal. In a way I welcome it as the trees and bushes are moving too fast so this will slow them down. Heck I have quarter size peaches on one tree. It only partially bloomed though so no big deal.

" Also after checking the temps for Monday it looks like Wisconsin, Illinois, Minn, Iowa and MO are getting clobbered with the coldest air. -52 F in certain areas. That is cold! Will these temperatures kill all tree fruit?"

I agree Mrs. G, that is bitter cold. Tree survival probably depends on how much snow cover they receive. Pretty much no fruit trees are going to survive -52 above the snow line. Even in places where the temps get down to -40, there will be widespread winter kill above snow. I've heard cases before where people can hear trees cracking when it gets that cold. Frozen moisture breaks them apart from the inside out.

It's only supposed to get to -9 here. However, if it gets any colder, it be enough to kill some young peach trees. I've read some isolated accounts where peaches have taken -30, but generally peaches are one of the least hardy temperate tree fruit. Young peaches are even less hardy.

Cityman,

The chart you posted is for non-dormant fruit bud development. For most people, exception being in really warm places like CA and FL, trees are dormant right now. Fruit buds can take much colder temps when dormant.

BR, the media tends towards hysteria, scientists towards sobriety, but why don't we leave that debate alone for a couple more months, just to give the forum a respite.

Olpea...

I'll be sure to let you know how my peaches fair...i have a row of younger trees out there in the ground...a lot of them have chip buds placed on them...yikes! not sure what is going to happen.

-3F here all day...tonite will be interesting.

On a tangential issue...

What positive (I hope there is one) will this brutal cold have on the pests we battle each year.

Insect
Bacterial
Fungal
Mammal
Avian

Mike

The one time I try to offer info to others and I get it wrong! Sorry! At least my heart was in the right place. I thought bud stage 1 or 2 was for dormancy, but after your post I reread and now agree. I still think its good information for potential low spring temperatures if they come later.
Meanwhile, I can only hope that none of us gets hit too hard. Best of luck to everyone.

not much bacterial and fungal help. There are 16-20 inches of snow on the ground, and the soil temperature is not worse than 25F.

Low of zero and high of 10 here tomorrow. It was almost 60 today. I spent the afternoon wrapping fig and pomegranate trees. Just have to hope for the best on the kakis. I think most everything else will be ok. A little concerned about the muscadines, but not much I can do with them.

On the plus side, I do hope this helps with some of the pests and critters that have been moving in the last few years. Saw several fire ant mounds for the first time this year. Armadillos are here now, too. I hope they freeze solid!

One benefit here is stinkbugs don't seem to do well following a cold winter and thrive following mild ones.

Here it still hasn't gotten down to what used to be a normal lowest but it's gotten well into the negative single digits. Tomorrow is predicted to be the coldest night yet and then things go back to the new "normal" for a while.

The new normal...Im afraid what the new normal might be :-(

Monday morning (1/6/14), before sunrise, and my front porch thermometer reads -19.3 degrees. Suburb of Madison, WI.

We hit -11 before sunrise here in zone 5 just south of Des Moines, IA. Hopefully everything should survive that. Will be an intersting spring.

-22.2F on the home weather station this morning just north of La Crosse... going to be close on what kind of damage I see. The wind is keeping everything mixed, so valleys/ridge tops are seeing roughly the same temps... if it would have went calm, i think temps would have been much lower here. Another 24 hrs and the end will be near. Extended period looks normal...temps getting back near freezing! heat wave.

Yep, above freezing temps through the weekend here (like 35/28), but first, we go through -14 tomorrow. With 20 inches of snow on the ground, I do not expect many tree deaths here.

I wish we would have had more snow cover. We only have 2" or so inches in most places. I used my tractor and loader to bury my TC Blackberry canes in 12" of snow. I don't think -11 is cold enough to kill my first year trees, but fingers crossed on my strawberries and blackberries. Raspberries should be fine.

This post was edited by rawley on Mon, Jan 6, 14 at 10:47

Wife had -8F in the van this morning in the driveway after i pulled it out of the garage. That is where all my pluots/container trees are..ouch! We'll see how that turns out in a few months. Probably right around 0F or just below in the garage by the trees. She had -24F out on the interstate.

This post was edited by franktank232 on Mon, Jan 6, 14 at 11:28

It bottomed out at -13f when I sent the kids on the bus this morning. Im pretty worried about my 20 peaches I just planted in November. Maybe I will get lucky since they were redhaven and reliance? I may well regret planting any of it this fall. On the other hand if they all die I might actually have room for the extra stuff I shouldn't have ordered!

I'd like to see people make the distinction, when talking about the toastedness of fruit, between the dormant buds on the tree now and the entire tree.

I'm certainly expecting winterkill on my J plum buds, and especially the chip buds I did last year. But what likelihood of the entire tree dying?

jag - I'm in the same boat. I talked a nursery into sending me 2 surefire cherries and 2 euro plums this fall instead of next spring even though they advised against it. It was 19f around Thanksgiving when I planted them, but the ground was not frozen. I mulched them quite a bit, but also planted on more of a mound than usual, so we'll see. Also, I have a 3rd year Reliance peach that has been doing great and is loaded with buds, so I guess I'll find out this spring some practical info regarding hardiness. I think we bottomed out at -11f, but it sure was windy.

I have a surefire cherry. I planted it in spring 2012 and it's grown well in a raised mound in my heavy soil (about 2' of new growth last year). It's loaded with buds, so we will see how it fares come spring. Our lowest temp was around -20 F. It is supposed to be hardy in zone 5 (minimum winter temp of -20, so right on target). We have some good snow cover, about 12", so I'm not worried about its roots. I also have a Danube, White Gold, and Crimson Passion bush cherry.

Of course, my established tree might fare better than a newly planted one. Keep us posted, Ztom.

I had -15F again this morning... Have no idea how my trees will react to this weather. I'm kind of worried about the container garage trees...might have to insulate out there better in the future (the ceiling is open)...

Cold wave done for now...snow incoming, but 30Fs

We had three nights between -14 and -16, with terrible driving conditions. Saturday it should rain for several hours, and at least the ice sheets on the roads will disappear.

I think there's still a lot that we don't know about our global climate. For example has anyone ever thought about the position of the Earth in space; its' solar system position, its' galactic position and its' universe position and what that does to a planet's climate? ALL of these things are moving. The planet Earth as part of our solar system takes 250 million years to revolve around the galactic core of the Milky Way. That's longer than our lifetime. So consider space to not be universally the same temperature and everything always moving.... then in our lifetime Earth might be in a colder part of the universe for a decade, a warmer place the next few decades and then an even colder part of space for decades more. What's that do to the climate? How can we measure anything relating the affect of planet positioning in the Universe with respect to the planet's climate? We can't. Maybe I am weird for thinking about this but it seems like a variable I've never heard discussed relating to climate effects on the planet. Space is always expanding in every direction (like an inflating balloon as points all universally move away from each other in every direction as the balloon is inflated). Maybe some parts are warmer and colder than other parts and depending on where the galaxy is,etc it contributes to changes in climate.

If you wish to learn more about the universe, I have a wonderful physics textbook I will mail you. Suffice it to say, the galactic position of the Earth does not affect our climate.

My "canary in a coal mine" for winter cold is my rosemary bush. The worse the winter the more the dieback. So far its not looking good, there are lots of flagged tips and some whole branches dead. During the big blow we went from 40 to 4F in 24 hours, thats hard on plants. We didn't get hit nearly as bad as the central US so I shouldn't really be complaining -- 4F is around the lowest low we usually get.

Scott

I took two semesters of physics in college and don't recall the topic of temperature variation of the universe being part of the curriculum in relation to a planet's climate. Has science proven that position of a planet in the universe has no affect on a planet's climate? Or is solar influence in a solar system the only contributing factor to climates on planets within the solar system? My thought is as celestial objects move in the universe they go into pockets or zones of different temperature (together with their galaxy and their solar system) and it just boggles my mind how that wouldn't have any effect of those objects within the galaxy\solar system. Think of swimming in a bay.. there are cold spots and warmer spots as you swim along. That's the best analog I can think of what I am trying to say. Make sense?

Seems like I have a question for the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. :)
{{gwi:126433}}

My understanding is that outer space is basically at absolute zero everywhere. So we don't "travel" through zones of different temperature. In outer space there is basically nothing to hold heat so the temperature is always as cold as possible, absolute zero.

40F to 4F in 24 hours is hard on some plants but common out west. The record in Spearfish SD is -4F to 45F in two minutes then 1.5 hours later 54F to -4F in 27 minutes. Chinook winds and cold air sloshing around beats a polar vortex hands down!!

What happened to our winter? It was just a few frosty roofs and lawns after a teeny weeny rain in December. Now its back to warm winds for the weekend and 80 degrees starting Monday. My poor early peach is already putting out flowers and it just dropped the leaves. No nap for him. The peaches will ripen too early and not be sweet. Hopefully rain is on the way but I wonder if it will be cold enough to make snow in the local mountains.

I wish we could have some of that cold air right now.
Hope that all of your trees will be ok. I wonder if I'll get anything but citrus and apples this year. The plums didn't get any chill and the peaches won't be worth eating. Should I just remove the fruit this year and save myself the mess?

kittymoonbeam:

Are your peaches not sweet because they ripen before it warms up? Is that what you're thinking? Maybe it will warm up enough.

I wish you'd get rain also. If not it's going to be a long dry summer!

I've been to Disneyland this time of year, winter anyway as I recall. As I remember there were patches of ripe strawberries, at least an acre or two right in what seemed like a city.

Newport, RI is having what we refer to as pneumonia weather. You really do not know how many layers you need! It was 12 degrees last week, then went up to 55 two days later, back down to 22 and today, friday, it is 30 and raining and supposedly getting warmer for a couple of days only. Go figure. Mrs. G

“What happened to our winter…?”

At this point, according to the weather models, the high-pressure system---responsible for the warm and dry weather----is showing signs of breaking apart after or around January 23rd. Then on the 24th, a frontal system will bring rain and cool weather to Southern California. Another storm will follow after January 26th.

I grafted an unknown early peach that my neighbor has grown for 10 years or more ( It was there when he bought the house). It's very delicious but as soon as it got old enough to have good fruit, I only had 2 years of sweet peaches and the last 2 years when the tree flowered in Jan. not Feb. the weather has been too cool and overcast and the ripening peaches all taste terrible. The same for the neighbors tree that I made the graft from. I could just wait and see again what will happen. Still, it's a cheerful sight in bloom and the bees are grateful for the pollen to bring back to their hives. I like to sit and listen to them.

It's one of the earliest trees to wake up so I called it my rooster tree but now has been named Cogburn's Peach by my friend. Cogburn's peach has been such a good tree for my neighbor and many people enjoy it because it hangs over the fence and the sweet peaches hang down over the sidewalk. There never is any mess because everyone eats the peaches as soon as they are getting ripe. I would trade tangerines in January for peaches later on and the super sweet ones were so much better than the just ripening ones that people got hanging over the sidewalk as they walked by. I wanted my own tree so much in case something ever happened to the neighbors tree. We never could find out what it was. That tree is looking stressed out now but mine looks in the prime health of its young adult life. I would hate to remove it but I worry about the loss of our cold and wonder if I wouldn't do better with something more reliable.

About the strawberry fields next to Disneyland. They were owned by an old farmer and although Disney tried to buy his fields many times, he refused to sell. The soil in that part of Anaheim is so wonderful. It's fine and sandy river bed soil. Whenever they work on the roads, you can see the magnificent soil that was paved over for parking lots and hotels and the parks. I would love to have that soil. Anyone who grows crops would love that soil. Strawberries do very well here. You see them here and there but mostly now nearer the beach cities.

The children sold the fields right after he died and they put parking lots on them. It was very sad to see it happen that way. I wish they would preserve some of the agricultural heritage of early Orange County. I remember when my parent's home had orange groves for miles along the roads and the air was sweet with orange blossoms. There are a few remaining orange trees in backyards of that neighborhood ( built in 1963) and they still produce great oranges today. The builders left some of the trees instead of knocking all of them down. The same thing happened when they built an industrial park on an orange grove. They left some rows of trees instead of planting grass like all the others did.

The value of the strawberry fields on Harbor Blvd. was too tempting because of its proximity to the Disney resorts and being on the main road where all the hotels are. The same thing is happening in Irvine. Soon all the farms will be gone forever and replaced with planned association neighborhoods and shopping.

Kitty, that is a poignant and moving letter- seems a bit wasted at the tail end of a topic that's probably about run its course. I'm glad I scrolled down to read it.

I moved to CA in 1963 and the gradual destruction of open spaces and farm land used to make me completely crazy. I used to have nightmares of a world completely paved over with asphalt and concrete.

Now it has become popular to "eat local", especially in CA. The reason sited is often about making a smaller "carbon footprint". I don't know about that, but I do know that farms are much more inspiring to me than shopping malls. I support local farmers as much for this as anything.

Kitty:

Thanks, I enjoyed that as well. My nightmares are of the brown haze hanging in those valleys as you fly in and the traffic. Not that the traffic was bad there. I walked from my agronomy meetings at the Anaheim convention center, by the strawberry field, and one day to Disneyland. I'm glad I have memories of those fields.