Ice Storm in Tampa!

14 years ago

So I'm laying in bed this morning drifting in and out of sleep and I believe I hear water running. Knowing there's no water running, I allow myself to keep drifting back into sleep. When I finally get up, I still hear water running. I look outside and see my sprinklers running. I can't believe I forgot to turn them off! I quickly head towards the control box, stopping to look at my a/c thermostat which shows the outside air to be 33. As if the cold wasn't enough, I've now subjected all my plants to ice.

When I stopped calling myself an idiot and asking how I could be so stupid, I realized it was very, very, pretty. I had ice on fern tips, ice on bamboo, ice on everything.

Then, thinking I was a great photographer, I ran out with my camera to get some of those great shots you always see when this happens. Unfortunatly, I was deluding myself again.

Now the question is, did I hurt things or help them like the commercial growers do when they spray the fields???

Lori

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Comments (10)

sharbear50
14 years ago
Huh, I don't know but it is pretty. I keep reading that is what the commercial growers do, but I don't know if it works. Good luck. Brrrr.
KaraLynn
14 years ago
My parents did the same thing years ago but the only plants that were watered before they realized what was happening and shut off the sprinklers was a large bed of formosa azaleas. The bad news is the all of the azaleas that were covered in ice lost all of the more tender growth on the ends of they're branches. Hopefully that doesn't happen to you. I think the damage will vary between different types of plants.
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I live in Upstate NY - near the Canadian border - yes, WAY upstate - Zone 4a! I wanted to post some pictures of the ice storm that we had around Christmas. Many of our trees were destroyed - seriously. I have a White Pine that I loved - blocked the view of the house - that is basically sheared away in the middle. Still not sure what we are going to do with this. Many trees were just snapped. My Tamarack snapped and the top ten feet of the tree broke off. Three Red Cedars almost done for. Poplars that were sheared. I will be honesty and say it is hard for me to go back and look at these pictures. Almost two months later now we have cut and chipped some limbs (figured we better get started on this early) that are already on the ground. The big Black Cherry we had to skid out with the 4-wheeler and we cut down the remaining truck and skidded that out too. We have had quite a bit of snowfall as of late so getting in there with the chipper is not possible now. When we bought this property it hadn't been maintained all that well in the last few years. We have worked hard the last three years sprucing it up and to see this act of God hurt. It is ironic to me because I know how obsessed, literally, I have been with it and to watch God allow it to be cut down in a matter of days - wow! Maybe He is trying to tell me something - more important things in life???? My DH kept telling me it could have been worse - tree through the roof, etc. - he is right I know but still hard for me to swallow - I loved all the work we had done. If anyone has any suggestions as far as what to do with these - obviously some have to be cut to the ground - I'd appreciate to hear anyone's opinion. White Pine Before/During Ice Storm - entire middle section is pretty much missing. You can see the snapped branches - I couldn't believe how many I hauled out of there that were just snapped off. Tamarack with top ten feet snapped out of it. Next to White Pine in above picture. Three Red Cedars as the ice storm was just starting/and now. Black Cherry Limb snapped off - honestly, this is the only one I really did want gone. Back of the house: You can see the White Birch that is hanging toward the house in the center and over another smaller red cedar. This tree is really three trunks and I imagine we will be cutting it down this Spring. The one limb never went all the way back up and the other two trunks are snapped at the tops.
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Michelle, It is 3:35 p.m. and I am watching The Weather Channel and it sounds like Arkansas is really getting it already and conditions are supposed to worsen, so I guess the Fort Smith forecasters may "ignore" ya'll even more if you're not having the ice too. Yes, we can hope we're wrong, but "in my bones" I feel like it is going to be a bad one. I can tell by the number of birds coming to feed, and we have huge numbers today. I just refilled the feeders and put out deer corn an hour ago, and the birds are having a big old pre-storm feeding frenzy right now. Randy and I both use the Weather Underground a lot and I love their forecasts. If you've never used it, you can access it via www.wunderground.com. Randy, I agree about the internet accuracy, but I have to say that our local TV forecast (Channel 12, KXII, the local CBS affiliate) has improved a lot since Steve LaNore became their chief meterologist. Still, I take it with a grain of salt and merge together their forecast, various online sources, the NWS and my own "intuition" to arrive at my own idea about what I think "will" or "might" happen. I bet the Eskies had fun. If it snows, and they get to go out and play in it, I hope you'll take a photo of them to share with us. Ada, Uh-oh. That's not good news. Y'all be careful. I think the perennials will be OK as long as their roots weren't bone dry. If they were bone-dry, you might have some root death. After all my bragging about what a fine job our local electric co-op does keeping the power up, I saw we're now forecast to get about 1/2 inch of ice here. Well, if that happens, the trees won't even have to bring down the poles and power lines, because the ice on the power lines will bring everything down all by itself. Oh, I dread the power being out. Our house is all-electric, so if we lose power, we're gonna be cold. Moni, I'm glad you're hubby is going to be able to make it home safely before the icing gets worse and the roads are even more dangerous. We went out and did all our errands early. Now we're just waiting for the fire pagers to go off, because as soon as the temps hit 32, the accidents start popping up on the Interstate like dandelions pop up in our pastures in spring. I don't really understand the sudden ice storm trend the last 5 or 6 years. Our first few years here, we had some gorgeous snowstorms and that was so much fun for someone like me who grew up in snow-deprived Fort Worth. These last few years, though, it is all ice and no snow. I'd rather have snow. Well, if I had a choice, I'd rather have 6" of rain and nothing frozen, but that's not gonna happen! Dawn
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katieauthier
14 years ago
Our sprinklers at the zoo though turned off have a qlitch that hasen't been repaired due to money. The result our sprinklers came on last night and animals got wet we lost a provost squirrel and have others in the hospital imagine how we in horticulture feel today.

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solstice98
14 years ago
Oh Katie, I'm so sorry!
scents_from_heaven
14 years ago
Depends on the plants as to how much damage is done. Certain plants can survive ice baths but others just give up. Time will tell.

Katie, I feel so sorry for the poor animals that got an unexpected bath last night. How horrible to freeze tp death. I do hope that those in the hospital get better quickly. I wish I had the money to give to repair the glitch because to me that is pure neglect and cruelty to the animals. Linda
katieauthier
14 years ago
Thank you Kate

Linda we are a non profit org. the reason the problem wasen't corrected was that it was going to cost around $2000.00 and attendence has been low so any extra monies goes to the welfare of the animals we could not predict this. But thanks for your concern.

Katie
sharbear50
14 years ago
Zoo-Katie, That is horrible, I am so sorry.
socal23
14 years ago
Using water to prevent freeze damage is only effective if water is added continually until the temperature rises above freezing, otherwise you'll make matters worse for your plants.

The reason water is used for frost protection is because the transition from the liquid state to the solid state is very costly in terms of energy. Water only has to lose one calorie of energy per gram to drop one degree C in temperature, but it has to lose almost 80 calories to go from a liquid to a solid. That heat has to go somewhere and part of it goes into the ice forming around the plants. The upside of this process is that until all of the water is frozen, the temperature of the ice crust won't drop much below 32 degrees no matter how cold it gets (even the xylem fluid of plants - the "purest" water you'll find in a plant - usually has enough dissolved solutes to depress its freezing point to at least a few degrees below freezing). Unfortunately, if you stop applying water before the air temperature rises above freezing, or the temperature gets so cold that the water freezes before landing on the plants, you will have made things much worse because cooling can now take place through conduction rather than radiation or convection (snow is a good insulator, solid ice - not so much) AND ice only has to lose about .5cal/g to drop one degree C which makes it an excellent heat sink for the plant tissue that has now started to freeze.

Of course this is also only helpful if you want to prevent freeze damage. Not all cold damage is caused by freezing, some is caused by the effect of depressed temperatures on other physiological processes within the plant.

Ryan
laura1
14 years ago
Ryan-thanks for the science lesson.
That's what I wanted to say but didn't know how.
coffeemom
14 years ago
Lori, I believe you otherwise I would swear it had been photoshopped! Ice? couldn't be. Interesting picture for sure.

Ice Storm in Tampa!

Comments (10)

sharbear50

KaraLynn

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