I purchased some Christmas lights just in case it gets cold here. Temps have been 70+deg all week and the same is forecast for next week.

Brought the Kaffir lime in to the house. Everything else is banked up in leaves etc. and just hoping for the best.

Ironically, it's just been fairly normal cold for January on the Northeast coast. My citrus are normally in the garage at this time of year. Outside temps have not really gone below 20 F much (coldest was 17 F.). That means they're pretty much in the 40's and 50's until it gets milder. The most tender plants I have in the garage are the lime and tropical guava and they pulled through last winter okay and I have no more room in the house for any refugees from the cold. Looks like the coming week will be calm (it has been much WINDIER than normal), sunny, with a slow but consistent warming trend. Hope so at least. Good luck citrus lovers!

Mine are happily in the house. I keep all of mine in containers for just such weather. As I write this It's 9 degrees outside. Last night was 9 degrees also. Forecasts show a warming trend with it 13 tonight but above freezing tomorrow.

What about the poor Floridians???

It was 27 degrees at my uncles house south of Orlando, and only in the 30's for the whole day with flurries!!!!

Iguana falling out of trees, and frozen aligators! Miami was in the 30's. What is happening? It has been cold before, but never this long of a duration...I hope everyones trees are ok!!

Mine are safe indoors, but the poor trees in tne ground.

I have some cold damage from the bad weather last week. I uncovered them Thursday and recovered them today. They have metal frames around them with frost fabric over that with a sheet over that. I don't have great hopes for their survival since it was below 32 before the sun set today.

We had sleet this afternoon which cooled the ground down even more than it had been. The local news said we were likely to have freezing temperatures for 3-8 hours. There is no way it will be less than 12. Tomorrow is supposed to be even colder.

Lisa
zone 9a
frozen Lakeland, FL

Lisa its hard to tell but the way you describe it the trees sound like they are in some kind of a tent. If they have a lot of space where you could hang a few Christmas lights without them touching any fabric or anything that would burn the trapped heat might just be enough to save your trees.

Yeah this global warming is a killer....

24 degrees at 11:00 p.m. This is going to be very bad. We still have hours before it is supposed to be at it coldest.

I couldn't do the Christmas lights on the citrus because they are more tolerant than the mango and avocado and I only had a few sets.

Lisa
Lakeland, FL

In Birmingham the sun shines and the greenhouse temp is 75* without the heater. The heater has run almost constantly from 4:30 pm to 10 am every day, except when it has been snowy and cloudy and then it runs around the clock. This is breaking my heating budget. My heating bill for November2008-March 2009 was $140. So far I have spent $105 with $85 of that in the last 2 weeks. I can't water because the garden hoses are brittle and I don't want to uncover and re-cover the outside faucets. My buckets of rainwater are frozen solid. The Ponderosa lemon, Key lime and calomondin appear to be doing well. High today is 32*; 17* tonight. Mon-Thu the highs are 43*-55* with lows in the high teens and mid-20s. It must get better.

Weather =/= Climate

National Center for Atmospheric Research:

{{gwi:286674}}

The data is being manipulated and it really is getting colder. I really don't understand how people can see it getting colder every year and read about global warming and believe its getting hotter. I'm sure someone will slam me for posting this but come on. No one can get research grants unless they are going to confirm global warming is true. Those who promote it trash the reputation of those who disagree. Their own emails show that they have been manipulating the data.

Watching last years Deadliest Catch all the fisherman were saying its colder than they have ever seen and the ice was deeper and further south than they had ever seen before. The climatologist at the same time were saying it was hotter and the ice was melting and soon it would all be melted. Are we supposed to believe our own eyes or what some egghead with a political agenda writes up and feeds us?

Here is a link that might be useful: Whats really happening

Think i'll go for a swim it's so warm..

Mango, you ought to know better than use data
from those clowns. Otherwise The Gulf Of Mexico
would not be 8 deg F lower in summer than it was
9 years ago and Hurricane Ike, 16 months ago would
have hit Galveston/Houston at 155/185 mh instead
of lowering to 125.
Lisa, most damage occurs at below 23deg F.
Then it destroys citrus at 1/4in./hr based on wood
diameter.

Friday afternoon, I finally got my covers on my
trees secured. But, in fighting that howling wind
with the large one [57ft x 29ft], wrenched my back
and couldnt crank the generator to run the heaters
and trouble lights. Yesterday morn it was below
23 F for almost 4 hours. This morning it there
was almost 8 hours and got down to 19 deg F.

Back down to 25 tonight. Hasnt been one this long
since Dec 83.

We've always had freezes like this. In fact the Texas citrus industry has gone much longer than normal without a devastating freeze. I lived in Amarillo Texas for 30 yrs doing agricultural research, 1970-2000. Nearly every year we had 2-4 days below zero. There have been very few below zero days in the last 10-15 years. The coldest there so far this winter has been 2F. In the 80s we hit -16F.

So as bad as this may seem, historically it's not that cold.

The Fruitnut

Scape:

According to weather.com, the coldest so far in Austin has been 17F. The record low for January in Austin is -2F. So you are 19F warmer than the extreme. Amarillo so far is 18F warmer than coldest ever. Here in Alpine Texas we have been 14F compared to an all time low of zero in January and -3F all time ever.

So over most of Texas this cold snap is ~18F above all time.

Hope your trees are OK.

The Fruitnut

Wow!!!!Incredidible!!

I to think its is getting cooler! We havn't had a a hot summer for years! This summer it hit 90 I think once..Who the heck knows what is going on. I think too many things at once..

They are saying it is the longest duration of cold on record..I feel bad for all those who have tropical plants in-ground..Good luck..:-)

I do know that all the weather men are in agreement that the waters off the east coast are definatley cooling off, causing the low pressure sytems to get stuck off the Maine coast which stops up the warmth from ever reaching us for a majority of the time by backing up the weather systems. Sort of like a traffic jam..Therefore the same stupid dip in the jet stream that sends all the cold air over us in the east since last year or longer..The east gets cold, while the west gets fried!

Are we loosing our crops and farmlands? Is the earth really cooling off? Makes one wonder..Our growing season is getting cut shorter and shorter as each year passes by. maybe we will all have to be dependant on CONTAINER growing at this rate..Join us at the container forums and get ideas on how to be successful, this way you can bring them indoors in the next cold snap, or water them during severe drought..

I can't even remmeber the last time we had a Bermuda high sit off the east coast and throw some nice hot weather our way..hum...

we are experiencing an arctic oscillation pattern that has taken an unusually wild lurch this winter. not the first time this has happened, probably will not be the last. The United States is just a small patch of the globe, and while weÂre bracing ourselves against freakish cold, the central Pacific has been seeing freakish highs. These are WEATHER patterns.

every single Scientific measurement suggests the CLIMATE of our globe is increasing.

personally I am on board with 97% of the climate Scientists on global warming, and there is a consensus

i think its a shame this issue has been so politicized by both sides in this Country. climate change denial is mostly an American phenomenon. there is a vested interest for Corporations to avoid environmental regulations and they have a large payroll of lobbyists and pseudo-Scientists. i think if the tables were turned and 97% of the climate Scientists refuted Climate Change this would never be a topic of discussion, but here we are as a result of politics and paid interests.

Here is a link that might be useful: Over 97% of actively publishing climate scientists agree that human activity is a significant factor in climate change

Mango those people are the same guys whose emails showed they were falsifying data and suppressing anything that disagreed with their false data.

The guys who have been saying its getting colder said this was going to be a cold summer and winter and no one listened to them. But they were right.

Not to worry though the same global warming guys will come up with data a year from now that will say 2009 was hotter and that this winter was hotter and you will believe it.

Try to keep in mind its not just colder in Texas or Florida or just the United States. Its freezing in Europe and China too. Not 1-4 days of freezing cold like it does every 5-20 years. Its freezing cold everywhere for weeks. Sure its going to warm up and its going to get hot this summer but the trend is colder.

Read some is the articles in the link I posted and look through the past articles in the archives.

Man Made Global Warming? Or;
The Man Made Myth of Gulable Alarming?

I first heard about this more than a decade ago.
The guy starting it was Roger Revelle. That made
Roger a big hit with Sierra Club and its kind.

They named an ocean research vessel after him.

He became Al Gore's guru at Harvard.

I could not understand how he could arive at
such a conclusion. Then it came to me. The model
he used was for sea water and air at rest. The sur
face layer gets saturated with CO2 and wont absorb
but a tiny bit.

Sure enough he got this in some lame journal.

In the real oceans at high latitudes waves break
constantly and the tiny foam bubbles are scrubbed
clean of CO2 by contact with new water.

Roger realized the error and recanted the whole
goofy idea late in life. He even gave a talk
on it saying he was sorry for the harm he did.

There are other giant holes in this theory.

Facts make no difference to these folks.
Those bars on Mangos chart are not one to one
data.

Al Gore calls us "flat earth believers"
I cant write what I call him.

They dont live in the real world.
Yet they're making billions off working folks.
And they want to make trillions more.

Meanwhile I've been accumulating frost blankets
knowing we'll need them for our citrus.

I have weather friends that work at the Tv station, and they say this cold snap is of the LONGEST duration on record, especially for Orlando to Miami and the deep south..A freakest day here is there happens.

20's and 30's down to Miami is rarely heard of, but the amount of time it has stayed cold in the south, the duration is unheard of..Are my professional weather friends wrong?

Mike,

I'm across the water from central Florida and
this is not the coldest ever. Likewise it is
not quite the longest cold weather either.

The freeze of Christmas 83 stayed colder longer.
Some three days in the twenties on the coast
south of Houston. Briefly to hi thirties then
two more days in the twenties.

In Jan 62 I saw 12 deg F in Corus Christi, Tx.
Same latitude as Sarasota.

In 1989 it was 7 deg in Houston but I didnot
have a reading. We average within 2 deg either
side of Houston.

The coldest was in 1897 when "every cow froze
in the county". They had a local orange
grown from cuttings that survived that.

Maybe that's why I like citrus more than cattle.
Lol.

And Mango wants to tax us for warming our our
citrus. They call themselves green but I call
them watermelons. Green on the outside but all
red inside. That's all this is. Listen carefully
and you can hear it too.

I dunno. I've seen it far colder in North Carolina, but the only cold spells of this LENGTH would have been in January 1977 and December 1989, and both of those were 2-3 week events.

I'm not touching a global warming debate with a 10 foot pole, but I'd say - just locally (NC), 2009 was a cool year, coming after a long string of very hot and dry ones. Two of the most vicious droughts ever recorded, and several very unusually hot summers.

Growing up here, and living in parts of NC, I would note that the lowland parts of NC could count on 1 or 2 good 6+ inch snowfalls (on the average) in places like Charlotte, Greensboro and Raleigh every winter. We haven't had a major winter storm in 7 years, which is unprecedented. It HAS been cold enough, often, but winter and spring are drier and windier it seems.

The 1980s were the decade of extremes - three cold snaps (Dec. 83, Jan. 85, Dec. 89) that sent temps to or below zero in the piedmont/coastal parts of the state, though it didn't last as long. The January 85 cold snap set all-time low temperature records in Asheville (-14), Charlotte (-6), Raleigh (-8), Greensboro (-8), and Mount Mitchell (-36, lowest ever in the state). The 80s also brought the 3 worst tornado outbreaks, and - in Charlotte - the only recorded calendar month (July 85) with no precipitation.

Back to the topic at hand, my plants are young enough that they were in before the cold hit. The yuzu, cinnamon and feijoas stayed out longest - until a week before Christmas. We had a very soggy late fall, followed by some very windy fronts in December, and I was skittish about waterlogging. Those last three suffered some slight wind injury on a very gusty but not especially cold night. And then shortly after coming in, the temps plummeted.

Over 97% of actively publishing climate scientists agree that human activity such as fossil fuel burning and deforestation is a significant contributing factor to global climate change.

funny how stating that simple fact gets the political hacks and FOX NEWS drones all irritated.

the evidence if you choose to analyze it independently is quite clear, Science works of evidence and reason.

there will always be the 3%s in every Scientific community, there will always be the be those who reject reason for emotion, superstition or political ideology. there will always those who reject the pursuit of knowledge and be content with falsehoods such as the Earth being less than 5000 years old etc.

Its really not Sciences obligation to appease these people, and i personally choose not to waste my time on them.

Mango no one can ever get through to you. You are to eager to paint everyone who disagrees with you as unreasoning superstitious emotional political ideologues too stupid and brainwashed to believe the truth.

Those who believed in a flat world were just like you and they were the majority at one time too.

Mango, welcome to our country! You must have only just arrived. Science?--We're still arguing Scopes here!

thisisme; if the Science changes Scientists will admit it and the facts will change. that simple.

until then i will stick with the Scientific community. if you want to take the word of a cattle hearder from Texas over them then by all means, just dont make the rest of us drink the kool-aid.

lowest here on the 32nnd parallel on the GA coast has been 25 this winter....so far.

Mango in my experience the Kool-aid drinkers are usually the ones running around saying the "The sky is falling." Kinda like the global warming people saying every year "If we don't do something within the next two years it will be too late."

However seeing that no one is going to convince anyone else their views are wrong; I vote we all just agree to disagree and see if the next few years are hotter or colder than past years.
After all there isn't anything we can do to change the climate no matter how much hot air you and I produce discussing the subject.

Its hard to believe now that global warming is affected mostly by human factors. I would say the sun spots and and orbit of the earth around the sun plays the biggest role. I doubt man made factors affect the climate more then 20%.

My main concern is not global warming but deforestation (habitat destruction), destruction of water habitat(overfishing etc.), fresh water scarcity, and pollution (especially water pollution).

Global warming should be the last of our worries. If anything a little global warming would not hurt as much compared to any of concerning problems listed above.

Since this Thread will no doubt disappear now that someone has dared to question the Myth of Global Warming(tm), I'll go ahead and say this:

"97% of the climate Scientists"
- This is a LIE. There is no such concensus.

Josh

Over 97% of actively publishing climate scientists agree that human activity such as fossil fuel burning and deforestation is a significant contributing factor to global climate change

Here is a link that might be useful: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_change_consensus

only slight (about 15 %) leaf damage to my mature key lime....10 percent leaf damage to meyer lemon. NO DAMAGE whatsoever to orlando tangelo, honey murcott, nagami kumquat, owari satsuma, ruby red grapefruit, or rhode red valencia. Over a week straight with temps dropping into the 20;s...lowest was 25...but only one frost which helped alot.

My yard got down to 15 on the coldest night. Two nights in the 20s, two in the teens. In ground I have Rio Red Grapefruit, Cara Cara and N33-E Navel Oranges, Kishu Mandarin, Meiwa Kumquat, and Miho Satsuma. All were covered, but no heat source.

When the covers were removed, the trunks and branches do not appear split. The leaves however show discolored areas of off-green and have a crinkled appearance. I expect to lose the leaves until Spring warming, but time will tell. Strangely, the grapefruit still on tree did not freeze. Perhaps the very thick rind protected the pulp.

On a larger note, perhaps global warming should consider the effect of atmospheric heaters such as HAARP in Alaska, and other ionospheric heaters operating throughout the world in places such as Arecibo, Puerto Rico, Tromso, Norway, and the former Soviet Union. Seems strange that governments are using such technology while asking the public to not warm the planet.