It's dry here too; I've started putting a dribbling hose near each of the little trees to give them each a good soak.

The weather forecasts are all screwed. There has been the pattern for the past two weeks. They always forecast temperature of mid-30's but then the street cars are always icing over, and the actual lows are between 27-33! Their 2-day forecast is even worst.

I can't believe i have restarted my irrigation last week, the grasses are beginning to dry out. I will turn them off tomorrow as the forecasts says rain for tonight and the following days, I am not sure if I am going to believe that.

Even my orchid rockroses want to be watered! Joe, how do your citrus handle the frost? I have had low temps around 32 for a week. And temps in the 30s for weeks. Frost every night to some degree. The only fruit I have on my young trees is nagami kumquat. They are coloring up. Some of the more exposed fruits are soft and mushy now. I think it was the frost.
PS that citrustreeforum site was your brainchild right? Are you still visiting there?

bfreeman, I am not familiar with citrustreeforum, only citrus.forumup.org of which I am one of the site administrators, but the owner is Todd Wade.

My citruses, guavas, bananas are handling the frosts very well.
Here's our nights when it frosted
Date, high, min deg F
11-10-2006 63 34
11-23-2006 58 34
11-24-2006 58 33
11-25-2006 60 32
11-27-2006 56 34
11-28-2006 55 30
11-29-2006 53 34
11-30-2006 54 26
12-01-2006 61 28
12-02-2006 60 32
12-03-2006 62 31
12-04-2006 64 32
12-05-2006 63 29
12-06-2006 65 30

The major factor was the very gradual cool down, hardening most of my subtropicals.

I've been patiently waiting for rain so I can move some of the natives. I planted some from containers, but I don't want to move existing ones until the ground is moist and I know more is coming. They're predicting rain this weekend, so I decided to move a couple tonight. Keep your fingers crossed that they're right.

They're also saying that out temps are above freezing, but every morning when I go out around 7-7:30, my thermometer reads 32, so I know it was colder at 5am.

However.....I have yet to see any frost damage on any thing except my coleus.

wanda

if it is calm and the sky is clear, the coldest time of the day occur at 30 minutes to one hour after sunrise. you call that thermal inertia and balance of net radiation. it happens at the same time every day winter or summer if skies are clear, no fog and no breeze. it is different if you have winds, precipiation, fog and or cloudy skies, the equations are different and highly variable, and then and only then you may have the coldest temp at 5 am.

i used to take hourly readings at various agrometeorological stations. now I only download them.

Also as human beings, we are sensing heat loss instead of sensing temperature, thus 30 minutes after sunrise, we could sense the warm rays of the sun while in fact the temperature would be at its lowest. Before sunrise we are sensing radiative heat loss to the unlit skies and give us a misleading sense about colder ambient air temperature.

the same reason why we feel that a bare metal tube feels colder than a wooden rod when these are at the same temperature but lower temps than our bodies, and the opposite is true if they are higher temps than our bodies, simply because we are sensing heat transfer instead of temperature.

Definitely looks like rain in the Bay Area today. Anybody catch the sky at about 7AM this morning? Oranges, golds & yellows on the clouds where the sun rises...quite nice.
All my tarps are out over my firewood & construction wood. Let it rain.

Yep, I saw it! Very pretty. Red in the morning, Sailor's take warning (cause a storm is coming).

Sure looked like it was gonna rain, but so far...nothing except wind.
The sun came out and it's been a nice day (except for all those dadburned leaves blowing in my yard. GRRRRRRR
I got a lot done, trying to beat the rain. About 10 plants planted and 5 moved.
I'm ready too.........Come on Rain!!!!

wanda

Me too! I wish it would rain, all my surviving plants from the frost and my roses could use some rain after the warm weather this week. It atually hit 70 today! Really weird weather. I don't mind the warmer weather after the cold days we had a forwarning of days to come I griped again to my husband I'd rather be hot than cold. But when it hit 117 last summer I think I said the opposite:) You know I'm up that early in the am, I gotta start looking outside to see the sunrise....We've got all the gutters up on our house now, let the rain come, the dust sure did late this afternoon with the wind, the wind was blowing all the neighbors banana trees sideways! Leslie

Ahhhhh, got about an inch outa that one. Sounds like the weather pattern may be changing. Another storm on the horizon for next weekend. Maybe the ants will stop searching for water in my house and leave me alone!

We had a good soaking yesterday from about 4pm on. Yaaaaaaaay! My plants should be very happy.

More expected all this week, but they say it will all be north of SF and San Jose should stay dry. Fine by me as long as we get the cloud cover to keep us warm.

wanda

Yes I griped to soon! My source says a good soaker likely next weekend for So Cal! And the clouds are great Wanda, no frost in days here.

We got about 3/4 of an inch on Saturday. Many bulbs in my unirrigated garden were already popping up (Growth may have been initiated in response to the smoke and ash from the Shekel fire, we were 20 miles down-wind and visibility was still less than 300 yards).

Wow, I wondered about who was caught in that and how they were doing. I haven't been watching the news the last couple of nights, I hope the rain helped.

We had a major fire in 2002 that burned 2 million acres in the Sequoia National Forest called the McNalley Fire and the smoke was incredible at our house for months. It started 3 miles away and as luck was the wind normally blew the opposite direction and stayed that way. The week we moved July 2005 a fire sprang up and we had a tough time getting our vehicles through the clean up, luckily they jumped on that one fast. That was my biggest fear the 13 years we lived up there, fire. I'm not sorry to leave that behind.

I also have growth popping from my bulbs in response to the warm weather and think the rain will initiate more.

Weird winter weather and everyone in the house has colds.