Those temps are not hot. Try 45C with 8% humidity and that will test things out.

Though i cannot say what will happen to those wimpy cloudy forest type orchids at 96F.

The tough stuff that i grow survives very hot summer days by just having an extra layer of 50% shade cloth on top of the shadehouse.

Wow.

It's a strange day when temps in your neck of the woods mirror ours (we're having a VERY cool and wet summer. The highest temp here all summer has been 96 and by now we've usually had at least 20 or so 100+ days)

Your pleuros might appreciate a cool windowsill...

That's not hot. It's more than that here EVERY day in the summer. Unless the humidity is low, it is not a problem for the plants I grow, the intermediate to warm growers. If you have cool growers, well, then they may have to come in. I only grow a handful of those fortunately.

Not that I want triple digits, but some warmth would be nice.
I've been considering moving many of my orchids back inside.
I realise that this is Oregon, but I don't think that we're going to get a Summer this year.
I was out locking up sheep last night and I could see my breath steaming in the cold.
It's 1:30PM and we're not even up to 70F.
This time of year, we should be in the high 90+'s with an evening cool down into the 70's.
My day temps aren't even getting up to my normal night temps.
If I wanted this sort of weather, I could've moved to Seattle or the coast!;~)

Been there, done that already this summer, and the plants have come through unscathed. Those temps are pretty normal for us here in central New Jersey. Just keep the plants watered, and they'll be fine.

Well, I could also say that -10 F is not that cold. No, my little wimps are not going to like it at all.

K

I sometimes worry about my plants outside. But i noticed in the paper yesterday, they print the weather stats for the previous year, to compare to the current year/day. Yesterday, it was about 93, and I thought it was miserably hot since I'm used to the same spring/summer that Clint has had...cool and wet. But last year on that day, the high was 105 F. I remember last year my ritual every day when I got home was to turn on the hose and spray down the plants, just to cool them off. This year, i haven't turned the hose on even once.

Another thing that makes me worry less, is that typically the amount of time that the plants are exposed to those really high temps, is not that long. The temp rises throughout the day to peak at unbearably hot, and then pretty quickly drops back down again. So maybe...an hour or three at the 'bad' temps. Of course, by this time in a 'normal' summer, our nighttime lows don't dip below 80. Now THAT worries me.
-MB

Mike, it's all relative. A diurnal range of even only 10 degrees is usually enough even if the night is hot. While we occasionally have an 80F night after a 95F day, we usually get down in the low to mid-70s at night no matter how hot the day was. I consider that a blessing.

In some areas where there isn't much of a range between day and night temps in the summer, such as South Florida, it is difficult to grow and bloom several types of orchids -- Phals being the one which comes to mind first. It is also why they can't grow tomatoes down there during the summer -- not the high temps during the day but the lack of cooler nights won't allow the fruit to set.

Here is a list that might be helpful to any newbies tempted by "outside".
Though the list should be read with some caution because there is outside and there is outside.
Beware above say 95F list.
Oncidium ornithorychum
Odontoglossum
Any Intergeneric with Odontoglossum ancestors
Most Phalaenopsis
Masdevallia
Miltoniopsis
Any cloud forest type orchid.

BUT as i said above, it depends on other factors, such as shading and humidity levels.

I remember when i thought that it might be a good idea to put some Cattleyas outside without shade-cloth on a western fence facing east in mid winter. They got sun burnt.

I guess it is the nighttime temps that worry me. On the days we get those 96 F temps, the nights often don't cool below 80+ F. A week or so ago, the daytime high was 98 and when I got up at 4 am the temp was still 85. It only went up from there. Hate that. I can deal with that for a day or two, but it gets old very fast after that.

K

Just heard the weather and Kevin, your heat hits NY next Thurs. Today it was windy and cool, but sunny. Absolutely beautiful Fall-like day. Some of my plants got blown off the porch. My little Equestris (2" pot), sailed through the air, down a hill, into the woods. I was crawling around in the bushes, trying to find it. Must have flew 500 ft. Finally found it. Moved a bunch of plants back indoors.

Night temps in the 50's. Tomorrow-70's. I think our summers, in the last few years have been cool. Nights have been very cool. Actually wore a jacket all day today. Arthur, I'm always trying to figure out your temps in F., 0 is our 32 - right?

Jane

Jane, 1C is 33.8F. That is the coldest temperature recorded here in some 35 years of orchid growing. I know i should convert any temps put here to F because this is a USA Forum, but i am just lazy.

I thought 95F was about a normal average summer day for 90% of the country!

We've already had the 95's for several weeks now, since late June. Today was a blessedly cool day for July, high of 82. But if there's two of those cooler days in one mid-summer it's nearly a miracle.

Arthur, I can provide shade for phals at midday, and find them thriving out there and even setting spikes on my hot deck where the ambient temperature in the shade often reads 99F or higher. I think it's the combination of heat and dryness that's the problem for you with phals, not just the heat.

However, we don't get nights as high as 80F more than a couple of days a year. Nights here on a 95F day will be maybe 75, with occasional 78's just to make sure you appreciate the air conditioning.

Folks, the shade is getting longer every few days now. In less than 6 weeks, the nights here will be in the 60's again. Enjoy the heat while you have it. Won't be long before I'm complaining about the gloomy days of winter.

Yes, I just noticed the shade thing yesterday. It's also getting dark earlier now.

We just don't seem to get heat without high dew-points. That always seems to keep the nighttime temps high. A few years ago, all the weather folks were in disbelief when we had a dew point in the 70's with temps in the 90's. That doesn't happen in MN. Now it's much more common. In fact we've had a few days with dew-points in the 80's and temps in the 90's.

This morning it's still cool - 63 F at 5 am. Feels great.

K

Hi
The listings for temps almost describes an average day in s. florida from mid may to mid oct. lol Have not found it to be a problem as long as I stay away from the high altitudes lol Often in the 80's at dawn with Hum . at 75 percent. Plants seem to do far better than I do lol
Have the most problem in spring when the temps rise but the hum drops. Almost everything sulks during that time.
Winter is problamatic also as the norms are almost perfect but temps drop very rapidly when a cold front passes
but usually is followed by a rapid warm up to too warm.
i split the average and only move them when predicted to drop into the thirties. on many types I find the move more stressful than the temps .lol gary

If June 21st was the longest day of the year, and from that point on the days are shorter, we've lost roughly a minute a day for 30 days, so we've lost a half hour in the day.

Yesterday on the news they said that we normally have 100 days a year over 90 and we hit 51 days yesterday. What are you complaining about? On the other hand, I'll gladly take my 100 days above 90 over your 100 days below 30.

Summer in Atlanta has been unseasonably cool. We did go through a long spell with no rain earlier in the season, but we get showers pretty regularly now and the temp has been bearable, probably in the low to mid 80s the last several weeks. A very nice change, to say the least. My plants have appreciated the mild turn of late.

Complaining? Me? Of course I complain about the heat. I'm from MN! It's a state pass-time to complain about the heat! Remember, we're bred to deal with cold. Don't all you Florida folk curl up in a ball and cry when the temps dip below 60?

The good news is the temps have been revised downward - just low 90's for the rest of the week. When I went out this morning, it was in the 80's with 71% humidity. I thought: "What a perfect Gulf Coast State morning."

K

Last week, I was in Little Rock, Arkansas, visiting family. Weather-wise, I could have been in Minneapolis: temps in the 90s, dew points in the 60s, and then 70 a couple of days.

People kept saying they'd love to have our cool summers. I had to tell them there wasn't much difference a lot of the time.

When I moved up here from Arkansas in 1980, the Twin Cities had an average of 10 days a summer when temps hit 90 or above. Each summer, radio and TV stations had contests to see who could predict the first day it hit 90.

People didn't always have air conditioning, even if they could afford it. Or they'd have one window unit for one room. During the '80's, I was mostly comfortable in a 3rd-story apt. w/ no AC and then was okay on the 2nd story of a duplex until the late '90s.

I don't know what the average # of days above 90 is now, but the first one gets no special attention.

The first couple of summers I was here, there were 2-3 high humidity/high temp warnings on the front page of the paper and on the news. We were told how to protect ourselves, our pets, livestock, etc. It was a danger here, and in Arkansas, it was a typical summer day.

Now, Minneapolis summers are much closer to Little Rock's. No more humidity warnings. Kevin, were you here then? Do you remember this?

As for orchids outside, last summer was my first with more than a few outside. Because we had so many days in a row in the high 90s and low 100s, many of mine were set back a year, maybe more - I'm not experienced enough to know for sure.

The Phrags have been inside for a couple of weeks, and they'll go back outside about Sept. 1. The Onc. Twinkles are back inside. I'm being conservative - or chicken - on these.

Most of the Phals are outside and seem to be loving it. The Phal Cameo has 13 blossoms open, hasn't dropped any, and may make it to 16.

So far, mine are staying put.

Whitecat8

WC - I was here then, but for the life of me can't really say when "this stuff" started to become the norm. What I really do miss and remember are true winters and regular thunderstorms. I know I'm not imagining the winter thing as it once was. During a recent visit to the parents we were looking at some pics from when I was a kid. Yes, the snowdrifts were up to the rooftops and one could expect that almost every winter at some point. Now if we're lucky enough to get a wimpy 6 incher, the weather folk are all over the tube with the up-to-date coverage of this major event.

Right now I'm longing for a sky-turn-green type of storm. Please give us some water.

All the plants are still outside and will remain there. The regular use of fungicide seems to be working so far.

Ah, nobody talks weather better than Minnesotans...

Hi, Aachenelf and Whitecat. You are not imagining the old winters, even youngish people have lived long enough to have seen a change. But, those who know best are the older folks who have lived here in MN most of their lives. I was very interested to hear from my grandmother that climate change is a popular topic of conversation among people her age. She does not talk about "climate change" the way people of my generation have learned to do so. Rather, she talks about it like someone would who has just used common sense and basic, everyday powers of observation to witness a dramatic change in the weather in her part of the world in her lifetime.

The unfortunate thing in the U.S. is that so many people move around the country nowdays, mostly for work, that when my generation is the age my grandmother is now, there probably won't be very many folks around who have made a lifetime's worth of observations about the weather, plants, and animals where they live. I have heard many people my grandmother's age say that there are not as many frogs around as there used to be. The expectation that there should be more frogs around, and a lot of this kind of knowledge, (I think) is going to pass away with the older generations.

Perhaps people from more Southerly latitudes find our summer highs here laughably unworthy of comparison to what they experience, but it feels hot to me. I think Minnesota has always been a hot and muggy place in the summertime, though it may be worse now. The heat is not so much what bothers me, but the lack of rain and snow, the low water in the rivers and the ailing vegetation. When we don't get enough rain before the ground freezes in winter, some trees dry up and die before spring arrives, and the frost in winter plunges even deeper now into the ground than it used to because there's less moisture in the soil. When spring comes, there's so little snowmelt that we start seeing grass and forest fires spring up in April and May, instead of June and July.

No cool weather is pure bliss, we only have a handful of "good sleeping weather" days a year. Gotta take advantage of it, even if we have to break down and turn the heat on. The thing is, while you all hibernate all winter, we hibernate all summer and play all winter. Not just because of the heat but the damn mosquitoes. I swear I'll be anemic any day now. I hate running around smelling like Eau d'OFF.

Being a gardener for about 50 yrs, I have seen subtle and not so subtle changes over the years. Plants which never wintered over, now live through the winters. Plants which never reseeded are doing so now. I've noticed changes in many of the flowering trees, blooming earlier, or not blooming as well.

Summers are cooler, winters warmer. Much less snow (I remember blizzards). I remember snow drifts so deep they were higher than the parked cars.

Roses had to be hilled and protected over winter. Now we do nothing to protect them except to mulch. Rarely a dead cane.

Jane

What part of NY are you from? I'm originally from Queens (Long Island) and my son, who still lives there, tells me summers are hotter and more humid there these past few years.

We still have it over you southern folk. We don't hibernate winter or summer. Playtime is all year round. No skeeters this year either. Haven't had one bite this summer. I guess the drought is good for something.

treehaus - Yes, we Minnesotans do like our weather talk. It makes sense though since agriculture is all around us. I didn't grow up on a farm, but we still took country drives to check out the corn fields. Loved those because it usually ended with a trip to the Dairy Queen.

It does bother me to think that so many of us are drifting away from our "ties to the land". I heard a story from a strawberry grower how a group of kids had come to the farm to pick berries. They were shocked beyond belief to learn that strawberries actually grew on plants. They only knew them from the plastic boxes in the grocery store.

I also wish I had asked my grandmother more questions while she was still alive. Of course I wasn't interested in any of that old stuff then. Stupid me!

K