Too Damn Cold. That's what it says!

Depends on a lot of factors. I've lost Metasequoia foliage at 27, but I've had Aesculus almost in full leaf tolerate upper teens.

The forecasted Sunday morning lows are quite remarkable. My relience peach tree's flower bud's are nearly open now, kinda sucks.

Brrrrrr

Wow, 9 degrees as far south as the Virginia-West Virginia border area. I don't know if that's near a record, but I would never have guessed it could get that cold this time of year.

Right^! And also somewhat an oddity, for at least this one time, the coldest plume will be to our east, Maack. I don't wish misfortune on anybody but I also don't mind seeing that miss us for once. Our lows all week appear to be milder than many points in the east. At this rate, Door County cherries and apples will be unfazed.

Roger that. We've currently got light snow with flakes that look like tissue paper falling from the sky. Weird.

I don't think we'll be sipping wine on the patio this evening...

maackia wrote: Wow, 9 degrees as far south as the Virginia-West Virginia border area.

Saturday morning's low is forecasted to be 11°F @ Dolly Sods Wilderness Area in WVa. Actually that is not unexpected. Some elevations at Dolly Sods top out at 4100' elevation and have more in common with some parts of Canada than WVa. We have gone to Dolly Sods right around Aug 12 to pick blueberries which is a month later than where I am in the East. So basically, it's still winter in those high elevations.

Our lows are expected in the mid to upper 20s. We've been colder at this time in April, but what makes it dangerous is the warm March. Plants this year are at the same stage of leafing out/blooming as they were on April 20 last year.

Yes, the mild March was not a friend. Here, in coastal NJ (Zone 7) though, the still cold Atlantic keeps us cool and clammy in early Spring, so deciduous stuff still looks winter dormant. Probably upper 20's here tonight but I see a chill down in the East into the coming weekend! Locally, damage may be limited to those Saucer Magnolias..., I wish my Star Magnolia would have seen a longer season as well. Forsythia is about past peak anyway, but I think they will be okay (as the early spring bulbs that are still colorful). Weird is having Mid Atlantic temps about the same as Fairbanks and Anchorage for most of the week! As soon as the jet stream shifts..., it will be full SUMMER.

oops, how did I miss this thread!? Oh well, sorry for starting another one. Indeed the warm March was problematic; and usually I'm close enough to the water that a mildly warm March day in say, DC or Baltimore, will be suppressed in temps here. If it is 60F there it might only be 52F here. But we had HUGE domes of high pressure this time, the puny upper Bay was no match for it.* Just too warm. Besides I notice stuff from meso-temperate climes like the aforementioned Mexican dogwood, didn't seem to go "as dormant" as they usually do, because the early winter was so mild.

* although I noticed that on the warmest days in March, even places in say, central Long Island were getting amazingly warm for that time of year, in that location, with very cold water 10 miles to the north and 10 miles to the south.

Tom Tasselmyer just said Baltimore might break a record tonight going to back to 1898 for 26F in Baltimore.

Yeah, Sam, I should've figured that out. I was in that part of WV three years ago. Ruggedly beautiful. The Cranberry glades were interesting.

I have two Ginkgo trees that lost their first flush of leaves due to a late hard frost in two recent years. Other trees trees seem to handle the cold better. Zone 5, Chicago area.

Virtually everything is open right now. These temps will zap a lot and we're going below freezing tonight and again on Sunday. This will be a repeat or potentially worse than 2007 for us. Mature oaks and hickories lost leaves in that freeze.

Here's an interesting write-up on that freeze from SC (I'm in NC), and the impact to native and non-native flora in this area.

http://www.hiltonpond.org/ThisWeek070401.html

Here in the southeastern corner of WV, we're shuttling between daytime highs of mid 70s followed by 40s and night time temps shuttling between upper 40s and lower 20s, just one day and night apart. It's nuts! And all the plants are 3 weeks ahead of themselves because most of March was in the 60s-70s with night temps so high the windows were open.

I remember the Easter freeze as if it was yesterday. Large mature native trees in the area still show signs of it. It is the first time I ever saw lawn grass turn black. The farmers in west TN lost several hundred thousand acres of knee high corn. Our forecast for this weekend has us at the freezing mark for two nights, but NOAA has a habit of being over conservative until the last minute so we'll see. The good thing is that growth is nowhere near as advanced as it was in '07. Our saucer mags are done, we actually had a pretty good magnolia year this year.

What is amazing is how SOIL type affects the night time drop off. I bottomed out at 29 F last night (party with the help of suburban/urban island effect), while more rural (and SANDY) pine barrens in S Jersey and Long Island dropped into the TEENS! This is getting depressing and old real fast.

In a frost hollow, 18F here this morning. No real issues, but I am sick & tired of the cold. More of it to come in a few days w/a huge Arctic high blasting southeast.

Many scientists believe that with the warming Arctic and the resultant diminishing temperature gradient between it and the lower latitudes will lead to weaker and highly variable polar jet stream, this of course means more visits of the dreaded polar vortex.

I have 5 JMs, but my orangeola is really leafed out here in PA, is there anything I can do to protect it? It's supposed to get down to 20 this weekend.

Just as a final update to this thread, now that some time has passed I will note that the most worrisome damage is on a Clerodendrum trichotomum. The leaves were just barely starting to emerge so I didn't think the freeze would bother them that much. But since then they are totally brown, and there's no sign of more green emerging. The stems still pass the scratch test though; is it possible the buds were killed and now, new dormant buds will have to be "activated" thus delaying leaf out another week or so? In any case the top growth had survived the past 3 winters, which I actually considered very promising. Other "tender zone 7 deciduous" plants did not fare so well; a small 14" Pinckneya was completely killed by the first cold winter. I guess it's really a zone 8 tender deciduous plant LOL.

We had some dieback on Japanese Privet, hydrangeas, and crepe myrtle in my yard. My parents lost almost all leaves in their 'black tulip' deciduous magnolia and half the new growth on some sapling pecans. Otherwise we dodged a bullet!