Sorry to hear about your orchard damage. I wonder what's going on with the weather. Here in California we are also having unusually late cold fronts, it dropped into the low 40s last night and a friend who lives at 2000 feet said it was almost cold enough to snow. While it's not 25F it's still about 15-20F below our averages.

They're predicting more cold fronts for next week, I wonder when the weather will switch to a more favorable summer pattern.

Sorry to hear your orchard suffered so much damage harvestman.

We have been having an unusually cool Winter and Spring here too though not cold by any standard. I was totally surprised to learn a few weeks ago that this was the hottest winter on record in our part of the country. I'm sure it was a surprise to everyone else who lives here too.

harvestman:

Sorry to hear the bad news. Hopefully a lot will pull through.

The weather has been unusual in many places. We were 100F with 65 mph wind and 3% humidity yesterday. Actually not that unusual here. What's unusual here is a spring without frost damage. I can remember 3 or 4 years without frost damage in my 37 years in west Texas.

The weather pattern right now is something you'd see in winter, not May. For everything i've seen, the middle part of the country should begin to turn mild in the longer range. I won't say the frost is done in the north, but its looking less likely. A lot of analog years with record warm March/April (like we've had this year) had May weather that turned cold. I still have no idea what summer is going to do, but don't be surprised if its another cold one.

It's a bummer, that's for sure. Most of my stuff looks OK, it was a moderately heavy frost Monday morning, but not a knockout blow -- temp hovered around 32/33/34. Frost was patchy, not solid.

The NWS spring outlook for the Detroit area said warmer in March and April, cooler to end the season, which is what it looks like it's doing.

DRENCHING rains here today. I sprayed everything on Sunday evening -- 1st spray on apples, pears, 2nd on peaches, plums, cherries, 3rd on apricots. Sure hope that Turbo spreader/sticker is a good sticker. I'm sure we've had at least 2 inches of rain since 8:30 this morning, if not more.

Den-

And there is another low taking aim at Michigan. I should pull another 1/2 inch out of it. Hovering in the mid 40's right now on May 11th! Amazing (our norm is 70F).

I'm reading some reports from MSU on freeze/frost damage in Michigan. Some areas really got clipped.

http://ipmnews.msu.edu/fruit/

It's not all that bad, apples and peaches are the main thing here anyway and if enough nects pull through I'll start to relish what will possibly be an unusually long growing season as trees are 2 weeks ahead of normal and almost 4 ahead of last years unsummered season.

Thanks for the sympathy, though, I appreciate it.

Well, the rain hasn't let up yet, and looks like it will go well into the evening. I'd say we're headed for 3 to 4 inches total. It isn't all bad, it was abnormally dry in the winter period, so we are down about that same amount for the year. I don't like to see the lakes low going into summer when the heat comes on.

A couple of my grape vines bought it pretty well -- Concord being the worst hit, because it's in the most open area. The others further down the row have the limbs of a hickory partially protecting them.

I had 29F on my home thermometer Sunday morning, and the only damage i've seen so far is on the dahlias :) I'll wait and wee what else pops up in the next few days.

I'll take the cold in the winter! I don't need this crap this time of year :)

We're beyond our average frost date. Close to our safe frost date and a week away from our most extreme frost date (which was the hard freeze that wiped out much of the US).

We had a frost a few days ago. All the damage I got was a couple grape leaves but the grape flowers might have some internal damage that hasn't shown yet.

With the warm spring causing everything to be early I figured everything would open and then it would frost, but it didn't. It even cooled off for the cold crops to get a good start.

H-man: major bummer about your crops! We hit 30 in that blast that got you later but the peach, apple, strawbs, rasp., and apples sailed right through it.

when I was a kid in Northern CO we had a Mulberry that came out of dormancy so late every year we wondered if it had died, I think it was usually in very late May to very early June. I miss that tree, the turkeys loved it.

Supposed to be 36 tommorrow night, s'pose it'll be at your place 2 or 3 days later, hope it doesn't get any worse as it heads east.

The tomatoes and peppers sure would like to get planted!!!

I didn't mention that my straws seemed unfazed as well. It is interesting to see relative freeze hardiness of tiny fruits. I do have some plums that appear fine, such as my Methely and the Santa Rosa types. Even the Fortune seems to have some fruit hanging under leaves that will be fine- just not enough. I will keep people posted on how this goes but I remain pretty optimistic. The Euro plum trees that fried had a light set anyway.

We value what we have to fight and wait for much more than what is easily obtained.