Well, then why in the world did they cancel a Winter Weather Advisory scheduled to last through 4 p.m.? Maybe computer gremlins ate it. I'd say I'm jealous of the snow y'all are receiving, but...hee hee...I am so NOT jealous. I've already had my fill of snow for this winter and doubt it is done with us yet. Glenda, I hope your son makes it safely in this weather. Mandy, I guess the kids are excited about the snow. Ick. I hate all the mess of wet boots and socks and gloves and coats, etc. Now I know why my mom was never as thrilled about the snow as we kids were on the rare occasions that Fort Worth received enough snow to cover the ground. Have y'all looked at your overnight low temps for the latter half of the week? Some marginally hardy plants may be in a world of hurt. Mulch, mulch, mulch! Dawn

Diane, I wonder where Mother Nature got the idea that she should transfer cold Artic air from the Artic region to the Great Plains and to the South as well? I fear Florida's produce industry is about to suffer horrible losses. OK, I've been up for hours. The highway is still bad but no one is driving and there hasn't been an accident reported in the last hour or so. I'm going to try to go back to sleep so the fire pagers can go off again and wake me up as soon as I am sound asleep again. Any of y'all who are driving south, avoid I-35 from about the Marietta exit all the way down to Denton to the I-35 split. In other words, stay home! Our medians and roadways already have a nice collection of wrecked, rolled vehicles in them, and our local hospital is really small and doesn't really need to get more crowded than it already is. So, in other words....y'all stay home! When a fire truck rolls over on the ice, that's a clue! Dawn

Dody, Welcome to the forum. You did just fine. Watering the roots is all you needed to do. The plant will pull up moisture into itself overnight so all you had to worry about in terms of frost was to cover up the plants before frost settled on them, and then to uncover them in the morning so they wouldn't roast in the sunlight. (They roast more quickly under plastic sheeting or buckets than under a textile type cover that allows air flow.) I was watching football all day yesterday too and can't even remember why I clicked on the weather map at the Norman NWS page, but when I did, I saw the Frost Advisory and said something like "Uh oh" although I might have used a 4-letter word or two. I watch the spring and fall weather very carefully here because all it takes is one cold night....... Jo, You are welcome and I'm glad I happened to see the Frost Advisory because I wasn't necessarily expecting it. You know how closely I watch the weather here. Our very first year here, we had an early frost on Sept. 29th and it was a very hard frost. I had about 3 hours warning and had huge, tall tomato plants covered in tomatoes. I couldn't cover them all, but hastily built a 'hoophouse' type structure out of leftover lumber and 6 mm plastic sheeting to protect them. (I had to run to the store and buy that plastic and since we are not particularly close to any stores, that was a 1-hour round-trip.) Anyway, near sunset it just seemed too cold to me and I didn't have a lot of faith in that temporary hoophouse, so after watching the 6 p.m. news, I ran outside and threw a couple of blankets over the top of the temporary hoophouse, and then dragged bales of hay (I only had 4 square bales and wished I'd had about 12) up close to serve as extra insulation. Everything that wasn't covered up died, but the 6 or 8 plants I covered up survived that night and a couple of other ones and I was still picking tomatoes from them weeks later. We haven't had a hard frost that early since then, but it sure taught me to be aware that we could. Dawn

Jay, It looks good here for the next couple of weeks too, until about mid-Oct., assuming we don't have a surprise frost here tonight. (It is possible because we stayed cooler than forecast all day today and our place is in a very low-lying frost pocket.) I'm not surprised NE OK has a frost advisory because they have had some really cool mornings lately, but seeing the advisory come as far down south as Pottawatomie County did surprise me a bit. I guess the sulphurs and monarchs sent everyone a message by veering towards the west while migrating, because northern/eastern/and parts of central OK are going to be very cold tonight, but the monarchs have been making their way through the parts that are staying warmer. Hmmm. What did the butterflies know and when did they know it? Were they hitching a ride on the wind currents or were they warning us of impending cold in the eastern portion of the state? As an aside, I went several days last week without seeing a hummer, then suddenly, we had hummers all over the place on Fri.-Sat. and none today, so I think the Fri.-Sat. bunch of hummers were migrating to get out in front of and stay ahead of the colder weather. Larry, I'm in a low-lying frost pocket in the Red River Valley and we have had very early frosts some years hit plants without damaging them, likely because the frost was on the plants only for the briefest of periods. I've also had some tender annual flowers survive 3 or 4 light frosts before a hard frost finally got them. It also is possible you had light wind and he didn't, so frost settled on his plants and not yours. A friend of our who lives about a mile from us but on much higher ground never sees as frost as early as we do. I'm even worried about our forecast lows here since we went 5 or 6 degrees lower than forecast last night. With a forecast of 44 for tonight, a dip 6 degrees colder than that would give us the right temperature range to allow frost to form if the other conditions were right. Our coldest temps lately occur shortly before sunup, roughly between 6 and 7:15 a.m. and I am usually awake by 6 a.m., so I'll run outside and watch to see if frost has formed or is forming first thing in the morning. If it has or is forming, I'll hose the frost off the plants or turn on the sprinkler or something to try to mitigate the damage. We just returned from Lowe's a short while ago, and our Lowe's still has tons of warm-season plants, including many tomato plants in 6" pots, and they weren't covering up anything so maybe they aren't worried about it. If I were them, I would be a little concerned. Keith, You'd better hope your stink bug buddies freeze. The alternative is that they are cuddling to stay warm (like some people do during an ice-storm-induced power outage) and will be giving birth in spring to many babies "made" during this cold night. That's a worst possible case scenario, you know. I am not liking how cold it feels here right now. It feels really chilly now that the sun is almost down and I am going to watch and see how many degrees we drop between now and 10 p.m. Dawn