it's 11:20 here and it just reached 29. i am in boyd tx just outside of ft worth. ccccccccooooooooold

It must really be hard in Florida since your not used to it. It is almost noon here (central Arkansas) and 21 degrees with a very cold forcast ahead. Our water at work froze last night and I don't know when it will be able to thaw. This is the first year for my new greenhouse and I am having to run an oil heater pretty much day and night right now, most of the plants seem to be doing allright for now.
Syble

Wow ladies! I am so sorry that you Florida folks are having to deal with such cold temperatures! I'm afraid the cold air has come all the way down from Canada! In Virginia, it's been below 30 for the last several days....we're having a heat wave today at 37! The wind blew really hard all weekend, but has subsided today...hopefully it will pass by in a day or so for you all too! Stay warm!!

I'm in south Louisiana, about 90 miles fromt he coast, same as Nona, freezing for the next 7 days, I'm not used to it either, and I don't like it at all.

Sharon

Freezing! Also for the next 7 days. Pipes bursting all over the place...hope mine hold out; we already had the hot water pipes freeze and burst in the bathroom earlier this month..wow! Friday is supposed to be really cold. Good news is, we can cook nice warm comfort food we don't usually get to have very often, and that's budget food,too, lol! Potato soup tonight with caraway crackers, and beef stew later this week; and maybe some hamburger stew if it stays cold enough. I even had to put on shoes and socks!!! No wonder Mamie wanted to have her puppies inside...she knew! On the bad side, I had quite a few pieces of glass on the deck for making bird baths and totems, and lost most of them just to the cold. And my beautiful split leaf philodendron is mush..along with all the different camellias. Nona, I guess I'm gonna have to pay more for my oranges and grapefruit??
kudzu

Man you guys have it rough! Try highs in the low to mid 20's with the windchill in the teens. At night we have been getting into the single digits with the windchill below 0. I have been having to wear my thermals along with my jeans and snowpants for work. Two heavy pairs of socks with my boots and toe warmers to boot! Try working outside in this stuff! This weekend hour highs are supposed to be in the teens. Tell me again, why I haven't moved out to L.A. with Chris yet? Kudzukween, I think I am coming to your house for dinner this week. I have been craving soups and stews for a couple of weeks now! My garden has been in hibernation for a couple of months already...nothing alive out there!

Sounds like a good time to take a vacation to Phoenix, this is our BEST time of year. Its been 70. Nights are 40s. I love winter here, tho our summers do me in badly.
A solid 6 months of well over 100 to make being outside miserable. So I am really enjoying this.

Stay warm, and stay safe in all the bad road conditions.
hugs, Karen

It's 15 degrees here right now but feels like 5. Tomorrow will be warm out - 22 degrees. lol Don't tell Mother Nature but we have been having a mild winter so far.

I really feel for you folks who aren't used to the freezing temperatures. Especially if your homes aren't built to withstand the cold temperatures and your gardens are unhappy. I remember dealing with burst pipes at one place where I lived. The pipes burst in a vacant apartment and they turned the water off for the entire building. We went without running water for 3 days.

Karen, I'm on my way! he-he

Having taken up residence in our 34' motorhome fulltime now, we landed in Mesa, AZ.
For us this is a winter we only dreamed of. Temps in the 70's during the day is outstanding. Back home the kids are freezing with temps not warming up much in the single digits and lows hovering around -20.
We will be headed back north when the weather warms.

Well, we are having "global warming" out here. Supposed to be in 70's today. DS & wife left at 4:45 this morning temp 52 degrees in my back yard, they are headed back to So. Dak. where it is a snow storm & by tonight will be -20 to -40 below, that is WITHOUT the chill factor!!!!So if he works tomorrow it will be inside getting things in order (builds bridges) So praying that they have a safe trip, they sure didn't want to leave!! They were wading in ocean yesterday!! They will probably have to shovel out their truck in parking lot at Sioux Falls before they can go the 118 miles in the storm to get home. Hoping weather reports are wrong!! Jan

By the time I drove to come to work this morning it dropped 15 degrees from 43 to 28 here in Denver. It's only an 8 mile drive! High tomoroow will be in the mid teens! 45 by Sunday though. This is what we here call Stock Show weather.
Kath

I have one totem that has collected water, and I turned it over on the ground and put a blanket over it. Don't know how it has done, since it has been too cold for me to go look-grin. Our area does not have the orange groves, and other citrus because of our yearly freezes, Kudzu. I am about on a line across (zone 8b) with you! I have been dripping all my faucets, hot and cold, inside and out, every time it's in the 30's. The only citrus I have is a Kumquat, and it is covered. I guess I should have put the Christmas lights on it, under the blankets. I buy any cheap 'covers'--bedspreads etc at yard sales and have been know to curb shop others. My Philos look like yours, I'm sure! I just did some changes at Cox, where I 'bundle' and my web site is down right now. Katladie, you are further inland that I am--I'm only a few miles from the Gulf.
Smick, I have been dressing like you-the cold here is a humid cold and cuts right through you. The stray cats are all 'put away' inside hurricane damaged houses with electric heaters, they are smart enough to know when they are well off! But I hate the litter boxes.
Except for the 2 I can't catch. They can curl up on the enclosed carport, on a very old electric blanket if they want-LOL
Hope the SD folks made it home safe!
All of you---KEEP WARM!

We're also in the deep freeze here in Iowa ... -15 to -20 at night & not nice in the day...relief in sight though..we're in a winter storm warning for 8-10" of snow between today & tomorrow...but supposed to warm up in the day to 20 on Fri. YIPPEE! Gotta love it, right! But I am not liking this VERY COLD weather!

Working on GJ'ing IN the house...one of those "pot wreaths" like Kirk got for a SS gift a yr or two ago. Well, you warm-weather folks, sorry that you're going thru this! Hate that your outdoor plants are freezing! Stay as warm as you can & DO leave those faucets drippin'! And DON'T turn into this garden-art fellow below! Jeanne S.

{{gwi:129725}}

WOW, I want some of your weather!! It's been stinkin hot here in Western Australia. We've had 2 days of 40 celsius (104 Fahrenheit) and around 22c (70F) at night YUK!!!! I hate summer!!!! I'm glad I'm not in the South West tho, a place called Esperence had 47c (117F) today, absolutely suffocating.
Bring on Autumm!!!
Just thought I'd share a photo from our front porch overlooking our beautiful city of Perth at sunset. (I have zoomed in a bit, the city isn't quite that close to our place, it's around 18kms)
{{gwi:129726}}

I hope you southerners don't lose your beautiful plants totally. It has been fairly mild up here in central NH. We had a cold snap in December with -10 for several nights but it hasn't gone below zero too much since.
Our fall was so mild that I am concerned about our plants from the opposite view - some of the plants thought that October was spring and bloomed untimely. Our spring blooming witch hazel and some primroses. Hope it didn't take too much out of them.
Kathy

We are in a blizzard in SD. I couldn't make it to work due to our roads being drifted shut. The wind is suppose to blow 35 mph this afternoon and tonight and 30 below temps - before windchill. So I hauled my next junking project to the house. I am making bugs from glass insulators and just got them washed up. Something to work on since I'm not going anywhere for a couple of days. I'm sorry you southerners are dealing with freezing weather. At least here in the north we are used to it. Not that we like it one bit!!!

You can send some of that cold Florida temps our way. January 2 we had -32.8 degrees around 6am. It's warmed up since then. Right now it's 7 above. Only about 10 more weeks until the first day of Spring - right?

Kids got on plane at LAX & sat there for 30 min while they were trying to find out if they could land at Sioux Falls. They made the trip & got off the plane from the 1 runway that was open, snowplow & de-icer were used so they could land. They were rushing everyone & getting the folks headed for LA on plane so they could take off so they could close the airport!! DS's 4 wheel drive got them out of the parking spot & Interstate wasn't too bad 1 lane & passing lane. Got home to find 2 ft of snow in their driveway since it had been cleared yesterday by relatives so DS got it blown out & had a really good headache & went in & went to bed. Glad they made it OK. Her son lives right close & their furnace is out. They have some electric heaters but if gets bad DS may have company tonight. Glad they made it!! Jan

Im freezing because we have thirty foot with no doors,we ordered sliding glass doors and they are not here.We do have an accordian shutter which is thin meta,we hung up quilts and dropcloths. Im afraid many of my tropical plants are ruined.

Sorry to hear it is so bad there. If you have a favorite(or expensive plant) could you make a covering for them. they take heavy plastic here,comes on 100 ft roll at Home Depot, & make a framework & cover the framework with the plastic.Even the top is enclosed. Most people use 1x2 in wood with upright every 4-6 ft. The plants are not tightly enclosed at the bottom & may have mulch or hay around the bottom but with some air space. They leave that on all winter. I've seen small trees with 2x4 frame covering the whole tree with plastic, which is several inches above top of tree so plastic is not touching the tree & it has some room to grow & the bottom foot there is no plastic but maybe branches & leaves out away from trunk. Many people do this & trees are fine after the plastic is removed. I've covered plants by throwing old sheets & blankets over them & when it suddenly gets hot have to run out & pull them back but that works quite well, I sometimes turn lawn furniture over to protect a hibiscus as they freeze easily & then pin a sheet over top using furniture to hold it on.I have 12in. wide cedar boards around my mini rose garden as wind just striped them & they started dying so just that protects them enough. If it got to 20 degrees tho I would throw a sheet over whole garden & hold in place on edges with bricks. My orange tree-I stand on ladder & use doubled king size sheets & wrap around lower part of tree on sections out from house, pinning the ends of sheets around a sturdy branch as needed use 3 connected together & that saves oranges. Oranges on top of tree are ruined each yr since we have started getting such frosts. My outside faucets I wrap with plastic bags& use handles to secure them, just 2 grocery bags in tan color so they don't look like eyesore!!My side water pipes I put that pipe insulation that is foam looking(kids like to play with the "long pieces like it was a baseball bat) then I cover them with couple of old sweatshirts pinned on & try to match color of house with the top covering so about 6 layers of sweatshirt fabric, old fleece blankets would work also. I do this as DB got up 1 day to discover he had a fountain of shooting water turning to ice in neighbor's yard. Big expense if something like that happened so I just prevent it. I wash this stuff up & store in garage until needed each fall. Hope this helps! We were also smart when we bought the house & came & insulated the outside walls evenings by car headlights & I later pushed all loose insulation into odd spaces in attic & laid down foil backed insulation all over so my house is well insulated. Jan

It's a little nippy here on the Gulf coast of Alabama too :Getting rain right now and they're forecasting that to turn to sleet then snow sometimes tonight. We haven't had snow here in Mobile in years,so I'm kind of looking forward to it,but only if the really bad weather holds off until I leave work tonight .. lol ! We're supposed to get down to around 15-17 deg tonight and even colder through the week-end. Been having to blanket my horses at night and that's something I haven't ever had to do.They've got fairly decent winter coats,but the air is so cold and damp I figured I'd better blanket them. Hope ya'll all stay warm and just remember.. in a couple of months our Southern heat will be moving in and by April we'll be wishing for Winter again..lol !

Susan

Very very cold in Western North Carolina. 11 right now. On a plus note they say it will help kill off some of the bugs we don't want....fleas, mosquitoes ,ticks. I hope that's true.
Martha

I don't think the winter weather affects mosquitos much. Except we don't have any then. They come back with a vengeance! I think fleas and ticks are affected, tho I think tics can survive a lot even without a host.
We are right on the edge of the snowy weather. Its south of us. Even tho the snow was light there were accidents yesterday. People up here are prepared for winter in many ways, but we always have a lot more car accidents, and also house fires in the winter.
Normally we have glorious blue sky and sun making the snow glitter and cold cold weather at the same time, but haven't seen much of that yet. Thursday was warmish (in the 40s) and sunny but otherwise we've had lots of overcast skies.
I can't really complain about missig the snow storms cuz I have a hard time shoveling right now as I pulled a muscle somehow in my chest.
But its an odd year for sure.
I hope its stops freezing down south.
kathy

Record low's (high teens) here in South Texas last night, will be again tonight.
One TV station says coldest it's been in 10 years, the other says 20 years.
That may not sound so bad to those of you in the north, but remember, you are prepared, and used to it to some extent, we aren't.
My plants are all gone, mush.
Good excuse to start over again. :>)

Rusty

Well, here in Melbourne, Florida which is about 20 minutes south of Cocoa Beach, it is 38 & raining. We may get some sleet later (keeping my fingers crossed that we don't). My poor plants have so much cold damage but hopefully it won't last. A good hair cut later should do the trick. I hate the COLD that is why I live here!

One of DIL grandkids that had been in Ca. for 10 days got on his snowmoblie in his yard today & only place that wasn't covered up got "frostbite" red mark on face but his neck in greenyellow/purple! He was in ocean week ago!! Big change. News said Aberdeen is -30 below zero tonight with windchill. Very cold. Concreteprimroses-sounds like you might have torn a rib lose, sure it's a muscle?? Easy to mess up ribs shoveling or sometimes even sneezing hard! I resisted buying any plants today since it was in the 70's because minute I get something in the ground it will freeze hard so what's the point. I'm going to put some silk flowers out. They are discussing the earthquakes up in No. Ca. Didn't feel a thing down here. Hope everyone up there is OK. 6.5 is big but out in ocean so just property damage probably! Jan

We're expecting it to get up to 10 today. Hoo-hoo! A heat wave!