Its cold here in Arizona too but not that cold. Closer to 35 degrees below average for this time of year. Come summer I bet we are told this was one of the hottest winters on record.

Ya, it was a great winter until today. My relatives in the Midwest report 13 inches of snow with 40 mph winds and a forecast for -18 tonight. TX and AZ are only bad for a little while.

Spitting into a tornado? Northwoodswis

Get use to it TX... more coming for you in a few day :)

We've got to spread the wealth, we can't always have all the fun up here in the north.

I only had .1 inches from that big Chicago storm. All went south. Maybe next time (God i hope not!)...

Yikes. You have my sympathy. I hope you don't lose power. I read online this morning that demand in Texas is at record levels due to the cold. The utilities are going to buy power from Mexico to help maintain power.

In the spring on frosty nights, I heat my little greenhouse with a portable kerosene heater. It amazes me how much heat it actually puts out.

Would some type of emergency backup heaters, either kerosene or propane, be an option? Or, how about a backup electric generator?

I suppose the stores are sold out of propane heaters and maybe even generators, but I agree it would be a great idea to have one on hand for the future, since fruit is so expensive and you have so much invested in it all. Just be careful of carbon monoxide (for yourself, not the plants).
Northwoodswis

I tested my 175,000 btu heater last night when it was 4F outside. Running nonstop for 2 hrs it would hold 49F, so 45F above ambient. Our all time record low is -3F. Add 32F and I need 35F differential. 35/45 x 175,000 btu = 136,000 btu minimum to hold freezing inside at -3F outside. That's a pretty big kerosene heater, right?

My best bet is probably just a generator to keep the heater and circulation fans running. The heater is natural gas so that should be reliable.

I just checked and see that a 175,000 btu kerosene heater is no more than a 3,500 watt generator. Guess that leaves the major concern of CO/CO2. My current heater is safe because combustion gas is vented outside. I'll look into that a little more.

Thanks for the input!

It got down to 7 in my part of Arizona.

I live at a higher elevation than Phoenix, but we're still not too high to have palm trees. No one here can ever remember it getting down to 7. The local ACE Hardware made a fortune today from people buying plumbing supplies from broken water pipes.

On my local news here, they said that it would be 7 tonight in El Paso, which I'm sure would be a record of some sort. I feel bad for those of you with tropicals and subtropicals. You're going to have the same kind of damage that Florida had last year and again a month ago with the record cold. I know it's disheartening to lose plants you've invested a lot of time in due to a freak weather event. The two that come to mind here are February 1994, when it fell to -30 with windchills of -80, and then the freak April 2007 arctic airmass that dropped temps here in Michigan to around 7 to 10 degrees, after having been in the low 80's about a week earlier -- poor timing on that, since many plants were coming out of dormancy at the time of the freeze.

I guess the moral of the story is to plant a variety of things, some that can take unusual cold and others that can take unusual heat, so that whatever the weather, hopefully something will do well in that particular season. Monoculture is not always very wise. Northwoodswis

South Padre Island area didn't get above freezing... I believe they have coconut palms growing there. Those will be toast.

Snowing in Dallas again...some areas have 6 inches!

Another big blast of cold air for late next week. This one could make Mexico City! Going to drive a bunch of cold air right down the middle of Tx. It does look further east this time.

I can totally understand why you HAVE to grow in a greenhouse down there. Plants can't handle those extreme temp changes. Around here we can get swings of about 50F in a few days...from -20F to 30F...but overall I doubt that has much effect on a totally dormant tree.

Frank:

If your high temperature were 53F below normal that would put you at about what, -30 for a high. We were that cold two days in a row. But this is great country for a greenhouse. The three days of clouds we got out of this were the longest stretch all winter.

It's 22F out right now and windy but my sunroom is pumping 90F air and has supplied nearly all my home's heat this winter. The greenhouse is as warm and toasty as I want, about 68F.

fruitnut,

You're colder than me now! Enjoy while it lasts.

Wayne:

Not sure where you are in Indiana. But we're cooler in summer down here than southern IN. Reason is I'm at 4500ft. Anywhere below 2,000 ft in TX is barely liveable in summer. But up here the summers are really quite nice. Not only that but our hottest weather comes in June. By July we are getting afternoon thunderstorms that often cool things down into the 60s from mid afternoon on.

Like most fruit growers I complain about the weather. But I do think this area has the best people comfort weather of anyplace outside southern California.

I just was some low temperatures for southern NM from this storm that, if true, are pretty amazing. For instance Tularosa that had never before been below zero, showed -17F night before last. Alamogordo was -13F and Tucson 18.

All it cost my operation was $150 in natural gas in three days. Small price to pay!!

Yes, this past cold spell was intense, and yes, those numbers you saw were true. We had -18 in Santa Fe, at least -20 where I live, and -34 in Moriarty, all zone 6 areas!

I am very interested to see how various plants fared this winter. Going by the books, places like Moriarty should have very little surviving come spring... since even the native plants there are probably not considered hardy down that low in the literature.

However, I would guess this is one of those rare events that will have some important lessons for us regarding cold hardiness. It might also offer opportunities for selecting new hardy varieties of plants, by finding the survivor in some otherwise obliterated population of marginal plants.

Maybe fruitnut has the right idea with the greenhouse?

Rapid City, SD was -20F on Feb 2nd... On Feb 4th they were back up to 48F... I couldn't imagine too many fruit trees would like that type of climate. They live downwind of the Black Hills. Chinook winds (falling air) cause temps to climb to very high levels, even in the middle of winter... I find it an interesting climate...

Temps around here haven't been bad this winter... Below normal, with above normal snowfall... but nothing extreme. Low -20Fs a few times (and again next week)... but spring is just around the corner.

Fruit-
One more cold shot late next week and you'll be back into a good warm up. All of TX last night had below freezing temps (again)..> I can't imagine that too many gardeners are happy. Just to show you, temps were just as warm in far north Canada as they were in Brownsville TX!

Frank:

Any warm up is temporary but my heating bill will be happy. Every spring in TX there is hope that it won't warm up too fast, that the last freeze will be early, or both. But the number of freeze free springs, without cold damage, can be counted on the fingers of one hand, that's in 40 years.

native:

If you really want to grow great fruit near Santa Fe, you do need a greenhouse. But the operation would be somewhat different than here unless you want a high heating bill. Our average low in winter is ~30F. To heat a 1700 sqft greenhouse to 35F will cost about $75 per month. To heat to 40, 50, and 60F would cost about $150, $300, and $450 per month. From that and your average winter lows you can figure heating costs in your area.

The best solution in a cold winter area would be to delay bloom as long as possible, only heat to critical temperatures which can be as low as zero in mid winter, build an insulated greenhouse, or some combination of all of these.

The Chinese are growing stone fruit in thousands of hectares of insulated greenhouses in some pretty cold climates.

Here is a link that might be useful: Chinese greenhouse fruit production blog

I forgot to say in my last post that the heating costs are figured using natural gas. And our gas prices are way above what they should be because of small town mismanagement. We are paying $17 per mcf. Current spot price is ~$4.50 per mcf. Figuring a fair markup and we're still paying twice too much

FN, your 1000 gallons of water (plus any thermal ballast in the soil) will keep the temperature at 32F until they freeze, if the GH is well sealed. To freeze 1000 gallons, you have to extract heat at 3.5 kW (the number you quote above) for ten hours. And nothing you have dies at 32F, and then yuo have another warming day. I think that maybe 1200 gallons and a good seal can keep you well protected.

glib:

You might be right if the outside temperature were just below freezing or if the crop were more freeze hardy. But I'd bet a lot of money that my open blossoms would be frozen well before the water in the barrels froze. A couple nights ago when it was 10F outside and 55F inside I cut off the heater and fans to simulate a power outage. In 37 minutes the air temperature was down to 41F. In another 37 minutes or one hour at most the buds would be freezing. The heat is in the water but it just isn't going to transfer fast enough to protect something as tender as fruit buds. And the water in the barrels was at about 60F when I cut the power.

Maybe under other conditions or with freeze hardy crops like greens, theory might hold up. I won't trust it at 10F outside for fruit bud protection.

I do greatly appreciate your input and calculations. Maybe you are right. But is all that heat of freezing going to be released all that fast?

I see what you are saying and I think you are right (and I am wrong). The numbers above are correct only if the heat transfer rate from water to GH exceeds or is similar to that of GH to outside. Your experiment strongly suggests that heat flows much faster from GH to the outside than out of the barrels.

I use carboys in spring (these are my wine carboys, after I bottle in March) in hoophouses with tomatoes or eggplants. I have had no case of water freezing, with lows down to 20, but that does not mean the air temp did not go below. The toms may make it also because I plant them well below the soil level (in a hole, basically, and I use clear plastic under the hoop house, according to a method you posted two years ago, so soil warming is at work too).

"We are paying $17 per mcf."

That is a rip. I think we are paying somewhere around 5 bucks/mcf. They also charge another buck or two for some kind of delivery charge.

With all the gas wells in TX, there must be some serious mismanagement happening on the part of your gas supplier.

It got down to around -8F here. That's probably been the coldest it's gotten in the last ten years. There's probably a good chance I lost a peach tree planted last fall. Also probably looking at some pretty serious dieback on Triple Crown blackberries.

How is that morning chill?

{{gwi:65549}}

Got to love the -27F in Oklahoma.

Cool map. No pun intended. Where'd you find that one?

Olpea: -8 is not bad for a zone 6, imagine hitting -34 for the same zone, as I described for Moriarty, NM above. Their all time record low before this was a measly -11, so they beat that by 23 degrees! The scary thing is that kind of record-smashing could happen just about anywhere I guess.

I've got several peach trees, and I've been planning on putting in Triple Crown blackberries this spring. We had at least -20 here last week (I say "at least" because it maxed out my weather station at that temp, but ones nearby recorded -22 and -23). I'll let you know how things fared come spring.

Try this

http://twister.sbs.ohio-state.edu/loopsh.php?based=archive/sfc/ustemp&loopid=Current+Temps

If you dig around that site you can find some other goodies.

That cold down south is bad, because unlike up here where its COLD all the time...(since late November i've had what, one day in the upper 40F's?)...you guys actually get warm during winter. Your trees probably don't get as dormant as they do up here in this ice box.

It was -27. I see from the map it's up in the NE corner close to the Kansas line. Perhaps hilly there, part of the Ozarks?

That has to hurt in a state that is basically all Zone 6 and 7. I imagine there are a lot of fried southern magnolias and other southern plants there now.

So far, so good here. It was -1 this morning at Oakland Pontiac International Airport near my house. Actually didn't feel too bad when I was taking water out to my birds, since there wasn't any wind here at that time. Windy out there now, though, as I look out the window.

DeninMi-

Yeah...its been a very mild period for the Great Lakes region. This morning was the coldest morning in a few years in Milwaukee and it hit -8F or around there. I was in the negative teens.

Lake Superior still has almost no ice. They had a record warm summer and lake temps skyrocketed.

"Olpea: -8 is not bad for a zone 6, imagine hitting -34 for the same zone, as I described for Moriarty, NM above.

Yeah, that'll ruin your day.

I'm not sure why they call this area zone 6. For that zone, it's supposed to average minus 10F. It almost never gets down to -10. Generally around 0 to -5 is the low.

Around 1990 this area got down to a record of around -20, but it was a blue moon event.

As Frank points out we get a heck of a lot of wind. Take the whopper snow storm about a week ago. It was really only 9" here, but with the wind it shut everything down.

Look at the contrast between the upper part of Florida and the southern tip.