Lee, Thanks for thinking of us down here in southern Alaska. Nope, we didn't freeze. My Min-Max thermometer shows a morning low of 42 versus Burneyville's 33.

2014 is the year of backward weather in Love County. For example, we usually have spring rain and summer drought, and this year we had spring drought and summer rain, although as you well know, the drought never went away. How does this relate to our air temperatures? Well, usually on these surprisingly cold nights, we drop lower than Burneyville, especially in April and May of almost any and every given year. However, for most of August, September and now October of this year, they've been colder than us at night. Usually the difference has been 2-5 degrees. Yesterday morning I think they were 5 degrees colder than us. This morning they were 9 degrees colder. Is this bizarre? That is such a huge difference and we're only a few miles south/southeast of the mesonet station. In Love County, though, with the frequent elevation changes here in the Red River Valley, nothing that the temperature does really shocks me any more. Really, once you have awakened in early May to a 32-degree morning when the forecast was for 50 degrees, Mother Nature finds it hard to shock you with any other weather that she throws at you.

After we went almost 13 degrees higher than Burneyville one day in the summer of 2011, I stopped trying to figure out why the weather is so peculiar here at times. And, on that summer day, I imagine we were experiencing compressional heating as a summer cold front was approaching, but that's just my best guess---because nothing else about that day made sense otherwise.

Our air has been really dry most days for the last few weeks so we have seen the nights generally drop lower than forecast. It warms up pretty quickly too though.

I have a garden full of maturing veggies so, if we had frozen or even frosted, I'd be kinda disgusted with the weather this morning. As it is, I am just feeling relieved.

I wonder if anyone here on the forum had a little dusting of frost this morning?

Dawn

This post was edited by okiedawn on Sat, Oct 4, 14 at 10:15

Here, just north of Tahlequah, we had a light frost. It just killed some of my ground cherries. Our low temperature, at sunrise, was 36 F. But it was the first frost of the season. Six or seven miles further North, a friend reported heavy frost on her car this morning.

George

I can't figure it out George, we went down to 45 in Owasso last night, but I think my back yard is somehow warmer, nothing seemed damaged, not even basil. You are south of me, seems like you would be warmer. And Dawn is much further south! Maybe I am closer to all the concrete in Tulsa. I'm OK with it, though, I want to squeeze every possible harvest day that I can.

George, To me, it feels too early for even a light frost. I'm glad it didn't get everything, although it is too bad it got the ground cherries.

Amy, We have the strangest weather here in Oklahoma. About the only thing consistent about it is its very inconsistency. Our first year here we had a killing frost/freeze at the end of September---likely the 28th or 29th. I was shocked. Most years we get the first hard freeze in November, but then one glorious year it didn't happen until mid-December. When someone new here in my county asks me when we get our first autumn frost, I can tell them truthfully and with a straight face that it occurs sometime between September 28th and December 14th. Granted, that is not the most useful info, but it is the truth,. Then I tell them that they likely can count on it arriving in early to mid-November in an average year, not that we have many average years.

Being further south doesn't do me one bit of good, and neither does having an average last frost date of March 28th or 29th. Because I'm in a cold microclimate (a low-lying creek hollow in the already low-lying Red River Valley), I'll get colder down here than a lot of y'all will much further north occasionally. I notice the impact of the late cold nights most in April and early May when we are way past our average frost date and ought to be having warmer nights. It means I really have to watch the weather carefully and cover up plants with row cover in March, April and even the first week of May if I feel like we will get colder than forecast. Sadly, the low-lying microclimate doesn't seem to keep us cooler in summer.

When I woke up the other morning and checked the mesonet map on my phone before I got out of bed, I was so shocked when I saw the 33 degrees listed for the Burneyville station. However, I knew before I ever went downstairs to look at our Min-Max thermometer that we didn't get that cold here at our house because our house was warm,, and I hadn't switched the HVAC over from AC to heat at bedtime. We were expecting 45 and went to 42 which is fairly typical of our microclimate.

The only damaged plants in my garden are pest-damaged or drought-damaged. That brief period of time at 42 degrees had no visible effect on the garden plants at all. In fact, they probably thought it felt nice after a long, hot summer. Sometimes we get frost damage even when the overnight low was only 37 or 38, so I am careful to harvest everything before we start dropping down into the 30s. I'm usually harvesting warm-season crops in November, and occasionally even in December. In the years when I plant cool season crops in the fall, I often can harvest the most cold-hardy ones, like kale and collards, all winter long but the lettuce will freeze once our lows start hitting the teens pretty regularly.

Dawn