And some of us are just sick about it too. DH and I went out in this cold wind to cover a 50ft row of strawberries in full bloom and the ten biggest blueberries as they are also budded and blooming. Just have to pray about the fruit trees as they are too big to cover. Plum already set fruit, peaches just finished and cherries and pears blooming now. I was so hoping for another good fruit year. I am STILL hoping and praying for a good year.

My stuff's all in pots and is moved back against the house for any protection that provides. Holding good thoughts for those fruit trees!

Carol

At 2am it's already below 32 degrees here and still dropping fairly rapidly. There seems to be a slight breeze, but it might just be the cold air dropping down towards the river.

Blueberries will be taking a hit tonight.

I just came in from checking the garden at 4:00 AM. The computer says 40 degrees in Ft. smith, my thermometer says 29 and frost on everything. I am just going back to bed, I have been so fed up with the weather this year.

I had planted 2 tomatoes in my till-free area a couple of days ago, but I have plenty of tomatoes and will replant soon. I am not sure this how this experiment is going to work out. I have one more area i will experiment with, the other areas the rye has been tilled in.

Even though the deer kept the rye ate down low all winter it still got over knee high before I started doing my thing in the different areas, I still had very good organic mass.

Larry

6:15 or so here, and the temp in the garden is 34. computer says it's 30.9.

i just say it's cold. :(

dody

It got down to 28 here. Half the blueberries will be lost. Maybe that won't be so bad. Another good lesson on picking the right varieties.

It's very frustrating when the tv stations give the predicted low for the city when most areas all around the city are significantly lower.

We didn't have a freeze warning or a frost advisory or anything here in Love County but I never trust the forecast lows here in April. I brought in all the seedlings and had nothing in the ground that could freeze. At the last minute when it was nearly dark, Tim and I covered up the lettuce with a frost blanket because our temperatures were dropping more quickly than I thought they should. I know from experience that a forecast low of 34 here often means we'll actually see 30, 28, 26 or 24. Or worse.

Our Forecast Low: 34
Our Actual Low: 26

At almost 4 a.m., the Fort Worth office of the NWS issued a Frost Advisory for the counties across the river from us. I hope the gardeners in those counties covered up their tender plants last night.

I was prepared. Our local CBS TV meteorologist said on the evening news that he thought many parts of our area could go below the forecast low and even down into the 20s and that there would be some "patchy frost". By then, I'd already brought everything inside, but his words helped convince me to cover up the lettuce. I know it can take very cold weather, but it has had such hot weather (upper 80s and 90s) that I wasn't sure how much cold it would tolerate.

I expect that my baby peaches and plums froze and will start dropping from the trees. With the strawberries and blackberries that are blooming, I think it is iffy. I've had frost and temps this low hurt them some years and not other years, so there's a 50-50 chance they'll be OK.

I've linked the Minimum Temperature Recorded map that shows the lowest temp recorded at the OK Mesonet stations. It looks to me like most of the state went at least as cold as forecast or, like our place, colder than forecast.

The weather this year is yo-yoing so wildly. It is hard on all our plants, even the cool-season ones, to have highs in the 80s one day and then have the lows plunge to the 20s. We'll probably be back in the 80s in a day or two. Can our weather get any more bizarre?

Dawn

Here is a link that might be useful: Today's Minimum Air Temperatures (Mesonet)

On another note, that graphic is a perfect example of why you cannot compare city temperatures today with the ones 50 to 80 years ago. Look at those OKC area temps. They are all artificially high because of the built-up city around them. 100 years ago those temps on this same night would be 3 to 7 degrees lower.

That's true. The heat island effect makes cities warmer than they used to be before there was so much concrete.

I wish we'd had more concrete around our place last night. : )

Got down to 27 here in Tahlequah. I'll have to examine things when I get home from work. I mulched over our potatoes yesterday evening, and I believe that's all we had at risk. Our blueberries have tiny leaves but no flowers, at least not yet.

Have you ever noticed that temps normally drop between 2-3 degrees from an hour before sunrise to an hour afterwards?

George

I wish I had mulched my potatoes. I have been expanding the garden and have used my mulch to amend the soil. I don't think I want to do that again.

Larry

When I went to bed at 1:30 it was 32 and when I woke up it was 30. I had thrown a one layer row cover over the broccoli which has been in the ground since Saturday. I didn't cover anything else and everything appears to be fine. My tomatoes are still inside but I will have them out for the rest of the day today and hopefully start putting a few in the ground soon. If it fails, I have back-ups.

My potato foliage froze back on the upper 2 or 3" but the foliage below that is fine. The plants in one row were 8-10" tall and I had them hilled up pretty well, so even if all the part that wasn't hilled up had frozen, the part that was hilled up would have been fine. I could have mulched, but was hoping it wouldn't get as cold as it did.

I hope this was the last cold night. I'm not convinced it is, but will start planting warm-season crops tomorrow anyway. I can cover them up if needed on whatever cold nights remain.

I had my tomato plants outside until about 2:30 p.m. and then moved them inside. The wind was beating them up.

Dawn