hey rogue ... your temps sound rather toasty.. compared to the last two nights under minus ten F for me .... though we did have a high of minus 5 F yesterday ... lol ...

anyway ... i think your snow cover is hopefully the saving grace ... i recall a year or two after i moved out here ... we must have had a similar event ... and many things.. come spring.. died back to snow cover ... and that is when i learned that snow.. believe it or not for you warm zone peeps.... is a great insulator ... go figure ...

and that next summer is when i learned ... with no insult to the root mass .. again.. the snow... a plant has the ability to rebud and grow quite aggressively in that following summer ...

i also learned ... hate to say ... that i wasnt investing in anymore JMaps.. lol ...

i also learned that zone pushing isnt worth it ... as i just had no micro climate out here in farm land ....

ken

hey rogue ... your temps sound rather toasty

(I was omitting "wind chill" 'ken'...what about you?)

Wind chills -40-50 F (-40 to -45C). A couple days of super-low temps won't kill the plants. It's the 40-50 F weather this weekend that might be the problem -- if things start to thaw then chill down again, that's trouble in the making.

Been there, done that, with another trip into the deep freeze afterwards. It's another thing that good snow cover helps with - the snow disappears all by itself when winter protection is no longer required.

Thankfully, have a good amount of snow cover here and a dump on the way in the advance of our first extreme bitter cold outbreak of the winter, bbbrrr! So far, the heating bills have been rather slim, though that will change. I'm heading out now to bring wood in for the fireplace!

What others have said. Not in the least bit worried. Lots of snow cover etc. and too much grief and stupidity going on in this world to get myself even more wired up about potential loss. Whatever doesn’t come back is an opportunity to put something else in.

Several years ago I had moved into a house where someone had planted an Oleander in a stupid place. It was huge. I kept thinking I would deal with it sometime in the spring. We had a record cold snap that winter and that was the only thing lost. I was so happy!

I've had 2 events over the last 2 weeks where the temps were in the 40s and 50s and dumped an inch or more of rain, then the following day and night temps dropped to the teens and 0 to -5 F respectively. Huge puddles in the lawn frozen solid. No snow cover at all. I planted a lot of trees and shrubs in the fall and some of them were adjacent to flooded areas, being moisture lovers. I'm curious to see what survives.

I could dance in the streets. The lowest I saw was 13F. I was lucky this time.

Not in the least bit worried. Lots of snow cover

I too am not concerned with the perennials part (although I would bet my life savings that the "Hardy Begonia" has left us).

BUT for me the question is how much die back will there be for our Japanese Maples as snow cover doesn't help bare branches.

Some damage to woody plants is possible. Herbaceous perennials are more unpredictable. The last time we had the polar vortex and 52 nights below zero the snow cover was so deep I didn’t lose hardly any perennials. This year only 4” of snowcover but it had been so mild up to this point there was hardly any frost in the ground before the cold snap.

I'm not sure I'd be overly worried about the JM's. If established in the ground, they should be able to take temps down to -20F pretty well, although some specific cultivars may behave a bit differently. And you can get some winter dieback from upper branches.....but that happens here as well and we never get anywhere that cold! It just seems to be a JM phenomenon, more so with the weeping dissectums than the uprights. I prune out deadwood every spring!

The only thing I’m concerned about is my caryopteris. Had several seedlings last season.

Sherry

I worry about the voles happily safe in their tunnels, feasting on roots all winter, leaving me dead surprises in spring. I hate rodents.

I’m a little worried about all my fall clearance pots I didn’t get in the ground. I piled them all up together against my vegetable box edge and loaded leaves over the top. It’s still covered in snow and most are shrubs with about zone 4 hardiness (I’m Z6), but I’d still like them to be alive in spring, just to say, hey still a bargain! It survived! My JM is potted and sealed up in the shed. I’m looking forward to seeing what comes through ok.

Well nothing unusual about our weather. We may have gotten down to -15. Lots of snow tho but we have had more snow other years. Lots of snow cover so don't expect to lose anything.