Good luck, Frank. We're looking at quite a system moving in here too- temps in the high 20's, winds to 60 mph gusts. I don't have any fruit set yet even on the pear, but I'm not likely to either if the bees stay moribund. (I did see one orchard bee today but it looked lonely.)

:-( M

Thanks for the warning Frank. I've been watching the weather reports. It looks like it won't get much below freezing here in Madison so hopefully everything will be okay.

athen-

The last 2 model runs this morning have shown upper 20's here in La Crosse... The same thing for Madison. The key will be calm wind/clear skies. Hope for clouds or wind. If not, a lot of freeze damage coming up.

This is for Madison:

http://wxweb.meteostar.com/sample/sample.shtml?text=kmsn

Its basically showing 2 mornings below freezing (Sun/Mon). Lets hope the models turn a little warmer. The other model shows mid 30s.

http://www.nws.noaa.gov/mdl/forecast/text/state/WI.MRF.htm

I'm getting all my blankets/tarps ready.

So far, for my part of Michigan, in the urban heat island of Detroit, they are keeping us mid/upper 30's. At least most things are about done blooming, seem less susceptible then.

I knew it was way too early for spring. Right now, by all rights, apricots should really be just blooming here.

I don't normally worry, but this time i am. These temps could kill off a lot of what i have growing.

Detroit? Not good:

29F/32F.... Sun/Mon...

http://wxweb.meteostar.com/sample/sample.shtml?text=kdtw

New run drops it to 26F here now. I'm pretty much screwed if i don't cover at this point. I have 6 tarps and 10+ blankets ready to go.

There seems to be about an eight degree difference between the Yahoo Weather predictions and Franktank's site, so keep your chin up. At least I don't live in a frost pocket. My orchard is on a hill. Northwoodswis

Yeah... It could break either way. Soil temp and recent rain will help keep us warmer. I still think a HARD freeze is in the cards for areas of Wisconsin Sunday morning, not to mention areas of MN/IL and then points east (MI) Mon and so on. Records are around 27F here, so this would be close. Clear/calms conditions with such cold 850mb temps is a recipe for disaster.

I will add i use this site/model almost every day and while it can be biased, it has handled the recent cold outbreaks very well.

I'm planning to cover everything. I'm not messing around.

Newest run brutal again. I'd guess an area wide frost (like the whole midwest) with pockets of freezing temps. NWS offices underplaying this right now. Wait until Friday when the scrambling begins. Apple crop in the midwest, not to mention the corn that is popping out of the ground is about to get slapped.

I'm pretty new to this. Most of my trees are a few years away from much production, so I won't worry about those.

I have three apples and two pears that produce. Petals dropped this week. What temps can they stand?

Oh, and do I need to cover my strawberries? They are covered in flowers.

Thanks for the advice...

There does seem to be some variation between competing weather forecasters in their models, and the variation is usually pretty consistent.

For example, I find that Intellicast always seems to overestimate temperatures a bit for my location. If they say the low on a particular night will be 40, it's generally almost always true that the NOAA/NWS site for Detroit will say 35/36, and they tend to be more accurate, IMO.

Weatherunderground uses the data from NOAA/NWS.

I'm not familiar with Frank's site, but I hope they're wrong about 29 in Detroit. They are saying upper 30's here on the NOAA site last I looked.

In my book it all depends on clouds/wind. If it goes clear/calm you need to look out.

6z GFS showing 31F both Sun/Mon morning for Detroit. The GFS has been very consistent, which is a good sign you'll at least see low 30's.

12z GFS shows the same for DTW... 31/31F Sun/Mon..

Showing 27F here, but only for a few hours.

We dropped to 24/official 26/home measured and my pear seems unfazed, and it has many fully opened blossoms. Now it's warmed into the 40's and the mason bees have been hitting it. (There's a reason we put the bee block a few feet from the tree!)

Neighbor's plum seems OK, ours hasn't bloomed yet. Apple not quite blooming. Lilacs surprisingly late, forsythia almost done. Tulips were all bowed over in the morning two days ago but are proud now.

Don't know why, but it seems like we came through this better than I would have expected.

Good luck and pass the ammunition,

M

I think I'm going to stick my fingers in my ears and ignore the weather. It really wouldn't hurt for my trees to take the year off and just grow.

Hope you guys want snow :) Looks like a wide swath of Wisconsin can get some snowcover :)

Still looks like a frost/freeze.

That cold blast has finally passed us and we are on a warming trend now! Supposed to be 40 tonight, so I think it is over. It was not as bad as predicted here, the lowest that I saw at my place was 32. We did get some heavy frost, but at least it didn't get into the 20s as predicted. Good luck, I hope it is warmer than predicted for those to the east of us as it moves your way.

It better be. Models still show plenty of upper 20's.

Freeze watch for a large area of Wisconsin Sat nite/Sun morning... Last model run put the temps in La Crosse at a fruit destroying 26F...

Everything covered frank? Calling for 30 here. Any field corn up in by you? I think most of it is up here.

All the blankets i have are being used. Calling for 30F here too. Last night was warmer then the models were showing, so that is a good sign, although clouds are disappearing fast across Wisconsin, and winds are going calm. Dew points are still in the mid 30's, so hopefully they stay high. This recent rain may help some.

Field corn is up. I was in Rochester, MN today and all along I90 I could see green in the fields. Hopefully not too much is damaged. We've also got a lot of apple orchards along the river (La Crescent/Galesville) so hopefully they come through.

Seem to have dodged a bullet here near Madison, WI. Never got below 34 at the house. The orchard and veggie garden are at a lower point and there is a light frost on the plants.

Hope other's fared as well.

Well here we go again - the forecast calls for 34 degrees Saturday morning! I think my tree fruit will be ok, but I am worried about my grapes. I have about 4-inch shoots with leaves and clusters, I'm thinking frost will be very bad. I guess it's time to get out the tarps again... I can't believe it is almost the end of May and highs will be in the 50s and lows in the 30s (after mid 80s the past few days).

Backyard-

Thank you. That trough out west is going to blowtorch us in the upper midwest. I've been 70F+ since last Friday and with a couple of near 80F days through Sat, the temps should rise to 90F+ by Sun/Mon... Looking like an ugly setup out there. I see highs in S. CA have been in the 50's and 60F's, with a big low coming in this weekend to cool things down even more.

We still haven't seen much of any severe wx locally. Its going on two years now where its been a complete dud.

I never did see any damage to my fruit trees. I did see damage to my potatoes and my dahlia. I think 29F or 30F just isn't cold enough to do much damage.

They are calling for frost this weekend in the North Bay valleys of the Bay area. That's very unusual this late in the year. Very cold air is still coming down from Alaska. This is crazy. All the fruit in my garden is in a state of suspended animation. The low chill apples are supposed to be ripe late May to early June, at this rate it will be July before they ripen.

Meanwhile the 30 d. blast we got a couple weeks ago didn't do as much damage as I initially feared. Besides a couple of plum trees with a low original fruit set, all it amounted to was some help on thinning my plums. Nothing else was affected as far as I can see. This pretty hard frost came a few days after last apples petal fall. You guys probably don't need to worry about anything above 30 as long as you finally get some summer.

I really hope that this cold blast is finally over. This weekend our HIGH temp on Saturday was 46! We got nearly an inch of snow accumulation before it "warmed" up. There was some substantial frost yesterday and I suffered a little damage on some of my grape leaves - luckily everything else looks totally fine. Things are looking better but lows are still hanging around 40 degrees... what month is this?

Here in the St. Paul area we broke the record high set in 1875 by seven degrees yesterday with a sizzling, humid 95 degrees! Northwoodswis

It's been getting to 85° this week here.

It got down to 33½° on the 9th I believe it was. Out here in the country it seems we are usually 2 or 3 degrees lower than the cities.