I was given advice from somebody in another forum that katsura's are damaged much more by late frosts than by early frosts.....we shall see though. I'm going to cover it with burlap this winter. I could see some of the tips burning off where there were new leaves but I bet it won't lose all of the harder wood under it. It grows super fast. Put on 3ft this first year I planted it so I'm sure it could recover very quickly and ill put a blanket on it next year if the same thing happens. Hopefully it will learn that lows below 10 degrees for 3 weeks means that fall is here!

Has the new wood produced appear to have hardened up sufficiently? I hope you'll report back come spring regarding the extent of any winter damage.

Alberta might have somewhat milder winters than the rest of the prairie, though we've often the very first region in the entire country (other than the arctic) to get those very early snowfalls and cold snaps making it a challenge for trees to fully ripen off, it often surprises me that we can grow what we do! :)

Right...it's mostly about hardening off, this can happen over a very long period which is best...a dry late summer for new growth to harden off, then a long mild fall. For me, this years it has been just perfect, expecting new growth to make the winter very well. Burlap don't help much if wood is still green but can't hurt.

Well I've noticed that places such as Denver seem to get extremely early and harsh frosts just like us and they grow some very tender stuff compared to us. I read about how they had a -24c in early november and lots of trees were still green. Apparently they still pulled through, so maybe early frost isnt that bad...

Yes for the hardy stuff... not the borderline trees. Denver is high altitude zone 5b...more fluctuation, lots of people have a hard time to grow fruits.

https://myswingle.com/great-november-freeze

There is mid-winter hardy and green leaf freeze hardy. I have noticed a big difference from species to species and it can be the opposite of what you think.

Its ironic that they are warning about hybrid cottonwood, aspen, red maple, ash, pines and spruce. Those are the trees we can grow that we consider the hardiest.

I believe that the rather good October weather has gone a long ways in helping the borderline hardy trees to ripen off.

Boy, it now looks and feels like winter !!

Dare I say it but if November stays anything like the long term says, we may have a record setting cold november without even hitting -20!

The abscission layer is a good indicator of whether the tree entered winter well or not. Look for the winter buds to have pushed out. If you've lost some top kill due to late growth, you will see that or if its dead then it wont push any

Yes, it's been one heck of a cold start to November and there's not much of a break in the forecast. At this time last year, we were in a very mild spell, on Nov 8 th Edmonton set a record of +19 C and at my location it was an amazing 23 C! I don't know how good that was for the plants, though sure had felt good to us humans!

I like to think everything tends to balance out and if we get nailed all of November then we will have record warmth December. But extremes are never good for plants. Would it be too much to ask for us to have one winter with normal temps every month lol and no major swings? It seems we are either extreme cold or extreme warmth. But that’s always been our climate....sigh

Yea...I look at it from the bright side..we're still better off then Calgary with temp. swings, and I'll take our sunny dry winter cold in a heartbeat over miserable wet winter climate at the west coast!

Im curious how my trees are going to take this year. We haven’t seen zero in three weeks. I don’t think that matters. It’s probably only a big deal if you’re seeing -20s the whole time and we have hit -20 twice overnight. Nothing too bad. This is the coldest November I have ever seen in my life though.

I do think that the rather good October weather had given opportunity for proper hardening off of most plant material ... so, even if temps "were to" remain very cold for weeks on end, things "should" prove to be okay .... but, yes, it's those real extremes on both ends of the thermometer that concern me.

Other than a few breaks, I'll agree, it's been one of the coldest Novembers that I can ever recall. As a kid of about eight years old, I remember getting deep heavy snow in late September and that darn snow had stayed and stuck around until spring!! Someone had recently also mentioned this, though they recall the snow arriving in mid September. Anyways, in spring, much of the garden had wintered over, peas and fava beans came back from the base of the original plants, cabbages sprouted from the cut off root stumps and of course any potatoes missed at harvest were up and growing. As that little kid, I remember thinking ... gee, we don't have to plant the garden this year! I was disappointed, but yes, dad was correct in saying to work it all under and plant fresh ... boy, that was such a long time ago !!

Wow. I have never seen a snow stick earlier than around haloween in all of my lifetime! So I guess I'm missing out on some crazy weather. All I know is Josh Classen mentioned that this was our 3rd coldest halfway of November....Did you know we typically get 17 days above zero in November? I'm not in the city and we haven't hit zero once yet!

You should be pleased then..the up and downs is worse on your trees...as they say lol. I like warm spills, [not as much into zone pushing]...just for the sake of my honey bees...they need a cleansing flight! They do this at plus 3-5C.

On my drive home from work, the temp gauge hit +7c. Huge difference! I don't think trees have any problem hitting anything below 10c during the winter as that is typical in all North American climates, but when you hit 15c ten times in the winter like calgary does, then you're risking early budding.

Denver is probably the harshest one of all as they can and do break 20c in the middle of winter and end up at -25c the next 48hrs.

"I like to think everything tends to balance out and if we get nailed all of November then we will have record warmth December."

Yes, sure are in quite the mild stretch, was +12 C today and much of the snow has fast disappeared and many of the beds are bare, even my protected backyard is becoming exposed. Won't be long and we'll be paying for this warmth, the weather yo-yo!

I do agree share your concern. By comparison to Alaska's interior to that of other winters more like yours we experience many blessings such as this winter. Our wish: -please let it stay below freezing.. Interior Alaska so far trending good

Some comments earlier people talking about two reasons of concern. -Lack of conditioning, -Major bottom line freeze event, etc.

Some time ago I found why we (interior AK) usually do better than Utah for winters with fruit trees due to embolism of vessels in the bark that develop air bubbles due to a fast approaching warm spell. So add that one to the harm usually experienced in the city I was born, (chinook city) Calgary. The problem with fast warm trending has to do with physics about physical ice forming inside places that when melting cause a vacuum. With the low air pressure created and due to moisture changes to h2o vapor is like an air lock waiting to happen in the spring when the top of trees need water.

In light of the fact trees may soon die perhaps make conditions of tree covers to increase humidity?

Of course another factor other than vascular damage is listed here, which involves trees trending in the winter's approach to dress up. This involves restructuring the cell walls to certain changes thus allowing osmotic pressure or "supercooling" to take place.

Supercooling

At any rate I am sure most anything that can grow in Calgary will not ever suffer here because the graph trend is our usual. Many things that I have sought for in the ways of peach-plum and some of the Edmonton other varieties that I have seen in Edmonton are indicating good news to inside AK. Same goes for what is working for those growers in the limited cold (more fluctuating) Palmer/Wasilla AK area. ...nothing from them ever seems to prove wrong here.

Well.....the capital city has a low of -18c so far this year and it looks like its going to come and barrel its way through that number for an extended period. Although I really don't trust how long it may last by looking at the weather stations, the weather network especially, is very guilty for forecasting way colder than every other company and not ending up correct. There's a reason the rest of them overlap a lot more. Weather network was projecting -10's as highs for the first part of December only a few days out on their forecast and all the others were going for above zero. We have ended up with one of the warmest stretches in December history. 17 of 18 days to start have been above freezing and most snow is gone. I keep watching the weather network and it never changes. They are always much lower for the extended period. The predictions right now across all are predominately cold but there are huge differences on certain days right now and that's good. Means there's a chance it will change.

This cold that is coming is going to freeze the ground really deep. Good thing I've mulched all my trees and I've thrown piles of snow on the small ones. Honestly though, my trees will survive extended cold as long as they don't hit lows below -30c.

I was looking at the extreme winter of 2014 in the usa, and Marquette, Michigan hit -20c (-4f) over 55 times that year and they are zone 5b and an ultimate low of -33c or -28f. That's unbelievable. Our capital city averages 25 times a year and hit 35 that same year.

Just looking at The Weather Networks forecast for Edmonton and it's showing a prolonged two week cold snap ... darn, the fireplace has eaten through a LOT of wood already this winter! This will be the fourth cold snap with likely a few more yet to come. Seen it mentioned on the news that last year we had three in total.

For other northerners, what's the coldest yet recorded at your location this winter? ... -31 C (-24 F) at my residence near Edmonton, that's really not too bad, though there has been plenty of cold days in general.

December 30th., 35.9 at Esterhazy, SK. We have had double lows so far, this should kill off a bunch of the Emerald Ash borer larva that has just been found in Winnipeg this year.

It was around -33C here in town and about -38C at the orchard.

I find weather network to be the most inaccurate after comparing the last few months. The best seems to be accuweather and CTV. Weather Underground is alright too and that's what you get on your iphone. Weather Network never catches warm ups it seems till a day or two before and accuweather will catch the warm ups way earlier. Check out the monthly. Surprisingly they are very good at catching big changes and are good at predicting much of the month ahead.

That being said, it looks crappy for at least 8 days on all forecasts but accuweather has a warm up at about saturday next week and is predicting a very nice Feb if you want to take that for what its worth.

Wow weather network's forecast is terrible.....but thats happened almost every single time its got cold this winter and then it breaks and they don't catch the breaks ever. Accuweather has predicted breaks everytime from 10 days out even.

https://www.accuweather.com/en/ca/edmonton-municipal-airport/t5g/february-weather/3383065?monyr=2/1/2018

-41c has been the lowest recorded temperature in Peace River this season. That's about 10c colder than the average lowest low that I've experienced over the last ten years. There's been much more snow than usual, though, so I'm hoping that will help.

Got a nice dump of snow, normally I wouldn't say that, though we've had so very little this winter and what did fall had melted. Have a long driveway that I usually shovel when a few inches have fallen, I like the exercise, though lager snowfalls require the snowblower ... though, I take the thing out today and it would not start, two hours later and a bit of grumbling, I had it repaired.

For the most part, I find the Global Edmonton forecasts to be the most inaccurate. One day, I had watched as they had given three different forecasts for the coming seven days. They also at times are overly optimistic, such as last spring when they kept showing warm temps will arrive within a days, then they'd continuously push those milder temps further back. I wouldn't mind if they'd admit to having to adjust the forecast due to the challenges of predicting the push between arctic and pacific air.

In my area we have seen 4 dumps in 365 days over 25cm. Its getting a little old at this point. Last spring in march and april we got 30cm twice. This recent snow was 25cm at least with an extra 6cm or so the last few days as well. The chance of seeing one 25cm snow in a given year is 16%, so I have no clue whats driving this moisture. I want to know what the record is if the chance is that low. I have never shoveled this large of snows this many times in such a small period. The one positive, we see melting all winter now and in years past, there was a lot less melting.

Cold week ahead but not as bad as December. Back to -3 Wednesday and 0 Thursday according to my iPhone. Accuweather is predicting a long ten day stretch of warmth for the middle of feb.

Man it’s been a rough winter. I have never seen a ponderosa pine burnt but mine is showing some fried needles and two of my 65 techny cedars are browning. Bad luck the past two winters. My techny cedars are rated hardy to -46 and wind burn resistant but they have been far from that unless they have some sort of pests eating at them.

Actually...so far it's been a average winter again like the past several... just wait till we hit minus 43, might never happen again with global warming.

Any year we don't hit -40C ( without the wind chill) is a good winter.

At least my cedars are holding up for the time being, hopefully will still be able to say that later on. All forecasts had missed the mark regarding their predicted nice long stretch of mild weather beginning in mid February, the Weather Network even admitting so. Previously, Accuweather's long range temps had shown normal to above normal from mid Feb. right clear through to the end of March, now that's all changed to pretty much solidly below. December was for the most part a very nice month, though other than a few mild spells here and there, it's been a cold winter and that's okay ... I'm just hoping the cold lets up in early April and doesn't hold on to the end of that month.

I don’t know how many times I’ve seen my area as colder than most of the province. It wasn’t like that the last three years. The real killer I’m assuming is the sunny days below -30 which have probably sucked all the water out of the pine trees needles. It’s only on the south side and I’ve seen lots of fully brown pines this winter already. Even lodgepole are taking it which is incredible. But I shouldn’t be that surprised. Even places thousands of miles south of us get years like this where all their pines take damage. Name a Great Plains state and they all get it too. I just hope it will recover as it only seems to be the newest tips and not all. Unbelievable that my cedars have done better than the pine though.

We're bookending the winter what could easily be more record setting cold. Accuweather shows that we return to normal or near normal temps on April 11 th, let's see if that actually proves true. Last April was a bad one and patches on of snow remained in my yard well into May. The early growing season continued cool with many near frosty nights, I got sick of lugging potted plants into the house well into late June! We're currently under La Nina status and she generally tends to brings prolonged cold winters to the prairies.

It’s been annoying for sure and half of North America is looking to break all time April records this week. All the way south to Chicago from Montana to Maine. I’m just happy my trees are not busses very far.. should all make it.