The last few days we've had temperatures from 40-50 with lots of rain. Coupled with the melting snow and frost leaving the ground, basically it's very waterlogged out there. Well last night a big cold front blew through and winds were gusting to 55 mph. The temperature was forecast to fall to 10-15 this morning. No big deal, I turned on my palm heat and went to bed.

All of a sudden I woke up at 1:00 am with the sense that something was wrong. I looked outside and the wind had blown off the enclosure from my washingtonia robusta. I'm like CRAP. I quick got up like there was a fire in the house, threw on my winter wear and went outside to assess the damage. By this time the temperature was down to 32.7F, falling fast, and the wind was blowing at 40 mph. I saw that the enclosure was blown off because the wind ripped my tent tie-down stakes RIGHT out of the ground. So I put the enclosure back on, try to hold it upright in the damn wind and go to pound the tent stakes in. I find the ground was as soft as pudding!!! I thought how the hell was I gonna get these to hold in pudding? I keep trying different spots and finally I found a spot that looked like it would hold. I then noticed my trachycarpus fortunei structure was about to have the same thing happen to it, so I fixed his stakes too.

So I came inside and spent the next two hours awake watching TV to make sure it stayed put. I went outside to check on them one last time close to 4:00 am and the ground was starting to freeze and they felt like they'd stay put. I then finally passed and the temperature was already down to 19F.

Woke up this morning at 7:30 am and its 11F outside. If I wouldn't have had that "sense that something is wrong" I'd be waking up to a dead washingtonia today and possibly a freeze damaged trachycarpus. Totally a weird night!