Bomb cyclone might develop off Virginia Beach area. Has happened before in distant past when Norfolk area got 40 inches of snow w/8 ft drifts -- late 1700s IIRC. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvg9gLhEK8I&pp=0gcJCZEKAYcqIYzv

I heard about that forecast model, beng, but didn't realize it had happened in the past. Just this morning I sent my VA Beach relatives a text to tease them about the possibility. It is insane in that video that there are forecast temps as high as 38F in northern Alberta, Canada! What a crazy imbalance! Edmonton's normal February high is -3F!

I'm already noticing a bit of damage. My redwood 'Swarthmore Hardy' is the only redwood on the way to the mailbox. (this stuff is incredibly hard to walk in, so I won't be visiting most of my 3 acres) The foliage right near the snowline is showing the characteristic reflected light damage. Likewise it's clearly going to be a tough winter for my Magnolia yuyuanensis x insignis. But it was basically OK last winter down to low single digits...so at the moment I'm only worried about damage, not death. Something like Magnolia dianica (whatever it's called these days) was fully defoliated in the PV winters, w/o major loss of stems.

Don’t some invasives along the Atlantic coast from north to south get beaten back by cold snaps like these?

@L Clark. I dunno, but I do know the orange groves that had at one time been planted as far north as Jacksonville, FL in the early 1900s(!), have been gradually killed southward until now there's only a remnant of them in south FL, and many oranges now come from Mexico, etc.

Hey, thanks, beng!

It just dawned on me, I recently was wondering why, years ago, you'd occasionally hear on the news about a killing frost coming down far enough to ruin the orange blossoms in northern Florida and possibly even southeastern Georgia? iirc:

Making me wonder why you never heard those reports anymore.

Because there aren't orange trees further north than central/southcentral Florida anymore! ding💡

The orange groves in FL went up to central Florida, and any remaining ones in that region could in theory still be affected by a hard freeze, as it is now forecast for as far south as Lakeland between Tampa and Orlando (or even beyond)...but development around Orlando replaced many of them, and now Asian citrus greening is killing off what's left of the industry throughout the state. The 1989 freeze was a big turning point that pushed production south of Orlando and it seems like that was when we started to hear less about Florida citrus freezes.

Florida could have chosen to have incredibly strict biological controls like California, and didn't. Many Americans likely still don't realize that vehicles driving into California have to pass through de facto border controls ('Agricultural Inspection Stations'), almost like entering another country. It's to prevent the entry of plant diseases. As the kids say these days, FAFO.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Border_Protection_Stations#/media/File:Agricultural_Inspection_Truckee.jpg

I think I can say now 15 years later...hopefully the statute of limitations has passed...🤣...when I did my cross country trip in 2011, I had plants in the car from quality PNW nurseries that would have obviously been totally disease free. * I had *no idea* about the border stops and it would have been a major bummer to have to surrender my plants, during a trip I'd been planning for years. Thank goodness a 'little bird' warned me about the inspections, and recommended a 'secret passage' into the state. Alas, the diversion took hours and I had to cancel the leg of my trip where I was going to search redwood country for the highest, most northernmost, and most distant from the sea redwoods, looking for hardy genes. That's part of the reason I did my 2016 trip to CA. (mainly to see the totally incredible Sonoma Horticultural Nursery in high spring). Alas the cuttings I collected from a high valley at 1500', well over 20 miles inland, failed to root for the propagator I sent them too. Oh well! The forms I have seem hardy enough for me. I might still try something like that again someday. There's some odd little mail order nursery offering 'high elevation' collected redwood seeds and seedlings, but I forget the name of the place.

* - Mainly from Rhododendron Species Foundation, who have the cleanest nursery I've ever seen on the planet, including Australia. There's literally not a misplaced spec of dirt anywhere. I've never had a plant from them have so much as a single spot of innocuous leaf spotting.

Just to add to the warm west -->> cold east discussion:

Here in Portland Oregon we've had no winter at all until the week of January 19, when we finally had a few mornings in the low 20sF. 21.2F has been the lowest so far. The ten day forecast is for highs between 50 & 60F with all lows above freezing.

While December was quite wet, it has been incredibly sunny and dry since then. Only 2.6 inches in my garden for the month of January...so far, it is raining right now, though.

Strong arctic cold high in the North will be pushing the snow bomb off the SE coast out to sea, north of NC. North Carolina may get bashed big time though. Apparently, storms forming south of Cape Hatteras tend to miss the upper Mid Atlantic and Northeast, but if they get to Cape Hatteras they get on I-95 and take the scenic drive up the coast. Cape Hatteras is a major meteorological benchmark in the East.

Apparently burmese pythons die if it gets much below freezing. hoping for many dead pythons in FL

Man, before you know it, you'll be putting Dusty Crum and his crew out of business!

Have a heart.

PS: I don't think it will be cold enough to kill Burmese pythons that far south (everglades).

Those critters go down into holes in the ground to get away from the cold.

The African rock python is a little more sensitive to cold but neither can take below freezing temperatures or extended periods of 40's. (I had to look it up). ;-)

PS: I don't think it will be cold enough to kill Burmese pythons that far south

Bill, Mid 20's to low 30's in the Everglades. That is insane! Strong arctic high pressure is the reason why the Northeast was spared from the southern blizzard for the Carolinas! I was down there years ago in late December and was stunned how COLD it gets inland, away from the Florida coastline, even at the southernmost tip! What with the sandy soils, I thought I was back in the PINE BARRENS of NJ at the same time of the year! Key West seems spared, it's a different world down there.

(everglades).https://www.weather.gov/images/mfl/graphicast/1.png

That is cold 41, colder than I would've ever imagined they get down there.

But what keeps Burmese pythons from freezing to death, when it gets too cold, they make use of the burrows made by the Gopher Tortoise. These burrows are very large in diameter and around 10 ft. deep. And can accommodate several to many adult pythons and sometimes a whole nest of little ones.

These burrows are also used by hundreds of other kinds of native species of reptile's and mammals, for much the same reason.

Guess who's going to win a battle deep in a dark, deep hole in the ground?

So, it appears the python problem is far greater than one might think.

https://naturetime.wordpress.com/2012/04/23/florida-gopher-tortoise/gopher-tortoise-burrow/

Oh, Lane, I was just kidding about Dusty (I think he's almost a millionaire anyways and he'll never run out of snakes, slow as he is. lol).

-9F here this morning. At same time, 12 mile-away Cumberland is -3F. Alot of that difference is urban heat-island effect.

PS Rhododendron leaves are so curled up they look like hanging green sticks.

That's just plain cold beng.

We had -11df yet an area north of me had -15.

The map still shows a remarkable shift of the cold air to the east.

Appears that somewhere in Ohio had -14.

PS: I didn't see your map ben until after I posted mine and don't know why. 🫤

Look at these WV & nearby area temps! Coldest temps not on mountaintops, but in mountain valleys.

looks like my bottom temp this year will be 5F. The duration of the cold is quite unusual.

88 F in Los Angeles today, as South Florida endures a Paleolithic ice age, down into the mid 20's

Shoveling a pathway to my detached garage tomorrow, so I can water and love my subtropicals. Been cold in there, cold is an issue but the dryness is even a bigger issue, have not been in there in weeks. Cannot use the hose as everything is FROZEN solid, so need to bring volumes of liquid water out of the house. I detest this COLD!!!!

Ben thanks for posting that chart, it is SUPER interesting. It lines up w/what I'm always saying about avoiding living in flat areas and frost pockets. (Although, before someone corrects me, yes, I know inversion layers are possibly playing a role, too) I missed out on a really cool house that was almost right on the water in Cecil County, but in was on flat land...now that the upper bay is almost fully frozen, I'm glad to be on a hillside so that cold air has a place to drain. The online Wx station nearest to that neighborhood has started to record some very low lows, now that the water isn't providing nearly as much protection. It's the same thing I saw in PV-1 and PV-2, which were the last times the Upper Bay fully froze.

If I'm to be as optimistic as 41 North and assume the upcoming cold waves aren't as bad, my low for the season will be 8F. But in a winter with so many twists I'm not! In my tedious studies of climate I did 20-30 years ago, I discovered that in very rare years, a February freeze can be worse than all freezes that preceded it. This means, for example, you could find stations where in a given winter, their only < 0F freezes were in the 2nd or 3rd week of February. (That is *certainly* true for snowstorms, too, btw!) That's why hitting about Feb 14th without a long range forecast for extreme cold is when I finally breath a sigh of relief. Two weeks to go!

At any rate, I am super worried about a lot of plants now. What the Polar Vortex winters showed was that with enough prolonged cold - and this is certainly now the worst winters in an aggregate sense since those! the true 'heir' to the title of PV-3! - it doesn't matter how much snow cover is present, tender stuff is going to freeze and die. It's hard to remember how many rare varied shrubby, herbaceous and bulbous things I lost but just off the top of my head: Fuchsia regia, various Ericas like E. × darleyensis and E. × veitchii - the former, especially, 'should' have survived a year that stayed above 0F, Kniphofia multiflora and K. northiae (including a quite large K.n. that had been in my garden in 2006), Pelargonium luridum, some Hedychiums, a 4' Australian Grevillea, small Yucca rostratas, Cyclamen graecums (again, quite large colonies), etc. etc. There will be SO many other things I'm forgetting. Don't get me wrong though, in the grand scheme of things I'd rather have the snow cover, than to have had the exact same run of temps without it! That would have been far worse.

The ONLY saving grace that might help this time is actually the fact we were in a mild drought going into the cold spell. Although AI will tell you 'wet soil is a better insulator for plant roots than dry soil' I strongly suspect there's probably a point of diminishing returns there. Because a lot of things are going to have more hardiness if kept a little on the dry side. We'll see. I am doing some experiments, too. Since I have a backup plant in the garage, I didn't shovel protective snow onto my Solanum laxum ‘Creche du Pape’. I want to see if just the foundation of the house will protect it.

Meanwhile, oh lawd there are gonna be a lot of dead palms and subtropicals in Florida!

UBG - yes, the iguanas will be falling out of the trees down there :o

Well, the January numbers are on the books, and here in SE Michigan our avg Jan temp was around 5 degrees below normal. My closest weather station went below 0F seven times, with the two coldest days dipping to -15F. And the Great Lakes ice coverage is expected to exceed the long-term average maximum of 52%

We may set the record for consecutive days below freezing.

Interesting, the coldest ever temp in Los Angeles was 27 F, it is dropping to 26 tonight in Vero Beach Fl, which is about 600 miles further south. Yep, this is going to be a zone denying killer for a lot of Florida.

Two full months of meteorological winter is now over! 🍾💥

It doesn't mean that winter is over but in reality, the slide into December, then back out during all of January, is the most demoralizing time living here.

We might get more snow before spring, but it undeniably won't last near as long as the snow we get back in December and January and it is moisture.

I even picked up all my fertilizer supplies for whenever it breaks around here. 🌲🤫

--------------

15 ABOVE this morning. 😎

First above zero low for last 2 weeks.

Also got up to 22df for a high.

First high in the 20's for last 2 weeks also.

-------------

About 3" inches of new snow on the ground this morning.

Back to NW wind 15mph today, diminishing during tonight.

One more -10 coming Tuesday morning, then 20's to 30's for highs all next week and teens to 20's for lows.👍

Interesting article about cold snaps and animals in Florida.

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/weather-news/article314517243.html

The other thing alligators do in Florida to stay warm is huddle together in one big mass, maybe they take turns for who's inside the thermal mass and who is on the perimeter. LOL. Yes, duration of cold is important with animals, and PLANTS!

P.S., Solar noon altitude is now 33 degrees, getting better for melting snow even in freezing temps!

I watched a news story about the cold in Florida, they showed large containers with piles of Green Iguanas, must've been dead, someone collected recently.

Your sun is 6d higher than mine 41.

JFWIW:

Our last -10 turned out to be -17df.

Oh, well, appears to be going into the mid to upper 30's, mixed in over the next ten days.

But guess who's always in the 'BLOB' when the cold arrives, no matter which way the cold air shifts (it was a little colder @ 6:00 and the norther tiers of MN are still c-o-l-d-e-r by far).

P.S.

If I was young enough to consider 'starting over' in a different location, it would have to be some place tropical, most likely Guam. Except for a threat of infrequent tropical storms, there's no possibility of late or early frosts and the dry spells are nothing to be concerned about.

And while everyone in the NH is complaining about ice, snow and unbearably cold temps, this is what we went through last week. And note that these are Celsius temps...

Bill, I think not all of the iguanas die, but actually in a extreme stupor that some recover from when they warm up.

When honeybees form a cluster in winter, the queen stays at the center, while workers right around her (at the cluster max temp) work quickly outward to the outside of the cluster and then gradually move slowly inward -- rinse and repeat for all the workers. This way no worker gets exposed to the cold outside of the cluster for very long.

'Bill, I think not all of the iguanas die, but actually in a extreme stupor that some recover from when they warm up.'

I thought of that when shown on TV. That person will be in for quite a surprise when it warms and those Iguana wake up. ;-)

Amazing how survival attributes kick in when needed, some species more than others.

There are no invasive reptiles that I know of here. Once in a while, you hear of a rampant snake, lizard or alligator on the loose during summertime, but our hostile winters easily handle any problems like that.

Shax,

I suppose your dry season, coincides with your hot season.

We were just talking about the earth being closest to the sun this time of year.

Please send some of that heat our way. ;-)

"There are no invasive reptiles that I know of here. Once in a while, you hear of a rampant snake, lizard or alligator on the loose during summertime, but our hostile winters easily handle any problems like that."

Bill, no reptiles in your world, including natives? Here, they are mostly snakes and mostly in more rural northwestern and northern ends of the state. They are mostly in areas where there are few HUMANS. Rattlesnakes and Copperheads quite common there in fact. Some incursion of non-native, Italian Fence lizards, but they are essentially harmless, doubt they do anything compared to iguanas! I love lizards though, not a fan of snakes.

https://youtu.be/lsMCvTvX7aA?si=V_p1yrcJvohBGVyjItalian wall lizards

We have several small harmless snakes, skinks, salamanders, turtles, frogs, that are native here.

Even the gray tree frog that can half freeze during winter without ramifications.

The rampant reptiles we hear about, are an exotic 'pet' that gets released by someone not too responsible, mostly in the twin cities and surrounding area.

A rare siting of a rattle snake has been reported in SE Minnesota.

The worst thing here for hikers, is poison ivy (small leafy type), then there's sand burrs and cocklebur.

Oh, you could freeze to death, certain times of the year, but growing up here, we were all trained from a young age how to handle the cold.

Playing outside in the snow, in very cold temperatures, was a regular occurrence.

Building igloos or 'forts' by digging out holes in the snowbanks, snowball fights or sliding down the hills at the city park, on a sled or toboggan, really made our day. ;-)

I can't begin to express how over this winter I am! Easily the most annoying since the polar vortex winters. The first snow in December was the most beautiful I remember seeing in my life. The way it perfectly coated every tree branch but barely caused any damage. Well, now we are paying for that pleasant experience.

Any time back to my childhood, if the "layer of solid ice over snow" phenomena developed, it cleared in a day or two. Not this time! Trying to walk off of any cleared surfaces is a death sentence!!! I had a couple near miss falls that could have really messed me up. Cleated snowshoes that look well made are very expensive, and might not arrive until next week. So, necessity is the mother of invention. Here's something I never thought I'd have to do: I plowed paths in my YARD with my Kubota, just to be able safely walk to visit my plants.

I'm probably tempting to fate to say this, but so far damage is not as bad as it might be. Thank goodness I got off my derriere and went out just as the snow was ending, to shovel it over tender BLEs. Before it turned into "snowcrete!" That and/or the natural snow cover seems to be helping...I've gently dug around and had some mildly pleasant surprises...and it's obvious sticking around, given that we've only barely gone above 32F this week. I've only been down to 8F...hopefully I won't go much lower. My Trachy is looking surprisingly good - proof that these are definitely very cool tolerant palms...just not tolerant once it starts dipping below 5F...which is definitely cold!

NB this poor devil has been grown very, very lean...hardly any fertilizer ever, and extra watering only when I was worried it might not make it. I'm convinced this forced it to develop a strong, deep root system that is now helping it weather this event. It was planted in either spring 2015 or 2016; most Trachy growers would be shocked it isn't trunking by now. It almost died twice in prior colder winters. Being smaller and less established, in this winter, would surely have killed it.

Update: I discovered the thingamajigs called "crampons". Nothing I ever needed to know before as I'm not into arctic mountaineering! I ordered some cheap ones from Amazon. I couldn't get my paths close to some of my plants so there would still be a risk of slipping.

Wow! UBG, you really got it!

You need sunny day or three with temps in the 40's & 50's.

It'll be 37df here tomorrow & sunny, but we still have a lot of snow on the ground.

In MN, the farmers always say it's bad to get an ice cover on the ground because it can suffocate the alfalfa crop. But that's all I know about it, I never grew alfalfa.

Glad to hear things are looking good.

Our biggest trouble with a season like this, is it could thaw out then get really cold again.

I can only hope that doesn't happen.

But we are in two different worlds that way.

;-)

UpperBay, I love Trachy palms, have a bunch of them. Tired of having them die in the ground...., TOO COLD in polar VORTEX winters..., and it only takes ONE. So mine protected in a detacked garage along with Date palms and Queens, many large Cycads, and Citrus. Now, waiting for our local MIN of 4 F this weekend. This winter is hellacious, and was supposed to be MILD!!!

Walking around in tropical WY today in shorts and t shirts. surreal

L Clark -- chinook winds.

"Walking around in tropical WY today in shorts and t shirts. surreal"

When one end of the country roasts, the other end freezes.

Hell has frozen over here. Going down to 2 F here tonight, gotta be one of the coldest NE winters in decades.

We've been a little above average here, with the monthly forecast through Feb. 22nd showing that trend continuing.

Sun altitude 29d today with some precipitation forecast. Having mild temperatures early like this, does make it easier to be out and about.

Alot of ice on the lakes.

I might have spoken too soon about my Trachy, looks like we are not going above 20F today, which is the first time in many years that's happened. 😱 🤯

But, again, I only share its status because I'm not super invested in it. I like rare plants. It is by far the most common plant occupying a 'position of prominence' in my garden...go to the other side of the Bay, and there are easily > 25,000 Trachys in SE Virginia these days. (Versus about 20 after the winters of 1985 and 1994, which tells you something, but I digress!) Therefore I can't get too worked up about it. This is certainly proving an interesting experimental test of their hardiness! On the old HP&S board which is now practically defunct, there was a guy "John in Colorado" who used to post about his efforts to grow Trachys somewhere in the warmer parts of that state. Those posts were well over 20 years ago, but I just vaguely remember they could survives some impressively low temps out there.

Date palms (Phoenix) are much hardier in places like southern New Mexico, known to have survived temps around 0F or below, that they'd never survive in more moist areas. While we don't think of Trachys as occupying a similar bioclimatic region to Phoenix palms, because they don't, it seems like dryness is similarly protective for them. So I'm beginning to think the fact mine is partly sheltered from wind, snow and, earlier in the winter, rain, is partly why it looks OK at this point. Although they certainly grow just fine in maritime climates, make no mistake about, the climates they originally came from are dry in winter, now, and were even drier in winter during the ice ages.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guiyang

What's striking about Great Lakes is not only how much ice, but how thick the ice is in the various Bays. At least 12 inches. I guess if you live adjacent to some of those, you can now drive your vehicles to the other side to save time! A few days ago Youtube recommended a video like that from somewhere in frozen tundra land (what I call the upper Midwest - sorry Bill!*) but it was just a mid sized regional lake, not part of the Great Lakes system.

https://www.weather.gov/cle/GreatLakesIce_Analysis

* I will accept any negative epithets for Muhrland, because I'm getting VERY tired of this state!

No problem ubg, I know what I have here and have dealt with all the negatives of living here a long time ago. I also have had my frustrations of a continental climate and have narrowed my selections to what grows here well, mostly.

My advice would be, just wait.

Until the warmth returns it will only be a guessing game, to an extent.

I'm still waiting to see if my hicksii yew and A. Psuedosiebolianum (who makes these names anyways?) will need to be yanked (possibly more).

Not exactly the Frozen Tundra, the willow stems are getting color, along with maple buds swelling but close.🤣

UBG, there's the fable (I'd say true) of the guy driving his 4-wheeler trunk from downstream of Great Falls on the Potomac and then out across the Chesapeake Bay to the MD eastern shore in late Jan 1977! That's when there were all the scares of an oncoming glacial age.....

There was a FB pic of a guy near the Bay Bridge where it looked currently partly frozen over or at least heavy ice there.

Ben we must get online at the same time of day LOL. (I'm posting this 5 minutes later)

I probably missed the opportunity for this photo but I was driving to Bel Air last week and saw, over the guardrail of the I-95 Tydings bridge, that there was a very sharp line between frozen and open water. You will see the same thing in a brook as the water is freezing, it will freeze in the pools and stay open closer the rapids. (because the Conowingo Dam about 5 miles north of this line) I'm driving to Bucks County this week and I'm looking forward to seeing, on the stretch of I-95 than runs along Amtrak and the Delaware River, tankers and container ships moving through channels cut with icebreakers. Who lives in a frozen tundra? 🤣

Unlike the Polar Vortex winters, where I've determined my lows probably ranged form 1-3F depending on the part of the garden and amount of shelter, so far this winter I'm still at 8F. And how plants look now sure seems to reflect that happy differential...confirming 5F is probably as big an inflection point for many plants as 0F is. But I wouldn't be posting that if I were VERY superstition, that's for sure! Because I cannot rule out one more nasty surprise freeze. 😱 When I studied climate before moving here* I found that such last minute surges of cold are uncommon, but they happen. The most notorious was the the infamous 1977 winter, that Allen H. told me saw American hollies killed in some parts of the mid-Atlantic. So it was not only the drought in the growing season months preceding it, it was the mild rest of winter that had also preceded it!

* Footnote I thought of: when I planned to move to an outer suburb of DC, I actually remembered that one of the Fairfax County public libraries - probably Reston - had some hefty reference tomes on US weather in the reference section, published by 'Meteorological Evaluation Services', the NY company that aggregated station data and had been the contractor for at least the first two official iterations of the "USDA Zone Map". My advice to any youngin' embarking on similar obsessive compulsive projects is to TAKE NOTES. Because back in 2005, I just spend a couple hours parsing through those books and making mental notes about where to move. Of course nowadays I would have a smart phone with me, even if I were needing to look at old books for some reason!

FWIW strictly based on *climate*, what I'd decided, at the time, as the optimal place to move would have been...drumroll please...Colonial Beach Virginia! On the Northern Neck. I somehow determined that, because of the long pitch of the Potomac NW of it, it had done comparatively well during many severe freezes documented in those huge MES volumes. The details now totally escape me. Alas, as a practical matter, moving where I did made 100X more sense!

-4F here morning of 2-8-26. Super cold up in New England. Glades temp was unavailable -- author guessed ~-27F there.

Ben, thanks for posting that chalk board again, WOW!

I thought of you last night when I took this screen shot at Wunderground...IIRC it was around 4am.

This is a fairly typical distribution of cold on a night that is transitioning from advective freezes to ones having a radiative component. If it were a full raditional freeze, the center of the NJ pine barrens would be lower.

̶T̶B̶H̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶1̶7̶F̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶K̶e̶n̶t̶ ̶I̶s̶l̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶a̶ ̶l̶i̶t̶t̶l̶e̶ ̶f̶i̶s̶h̶y̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶m̶e̶ ̶n̶o̶w̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶B̶a̶y̶ ̶h̶a̶s̶ ̶a̶l̶m̶o̶s̶t̶ ̶f̶r̶o̶z̶e̶n̶ ̶t̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶f̶a̶r̶ ̶s̶o̶u̶t̶h̶.̶ This is the problem with Wunderground, there's no guarantee all the stations are correctly set up. I've seen idiots who obviously have theirs in a garage or something, because they are so out of bounds. EDITED THAT. For some reason a lot of the Bay ice has broken up since Jan 30th.

https://usicecenter.gov/Products/MidAtlanticHome

Sandy Point shoal lighthouse, near the Maryland Bay Bridge.

Swallow Falls State park in far western Maryland (Garrett Co). Giant ice-sculpture.

Definitely a good year for frozen waterfall photos! For my location there's no doubt this is the coldest winter since the PV years (2013/14 & 2014/15). We had -6F early this morning, -11F early yesterday morning.

It's surprising how the estimated Great Lakes ice coverage can vary from day to day - even though we've been consistently cold the last few weeks, the ice cover has jumped up and down:

The latest analysis is 53% coverage, with the long term average maximum being 52%

42 here yesterday and a week of high 30's to low 40's but nighttime lows are in the 20's and that will slow the thaw down, which is good because it's early for us and the concern is that, before it's over, we might get below zero again, for a spell or two. But for me this is more the norm, in that way.

Sorry about the hits you all might have taken with your selections; because of this unprecedented cold you're experiencing.

Gooseberry Falls is popular for ice climbers in the winter.

For UBG -- latest view of Chesapeake Bay freezing. Potomac river in my area has been frozen for some time.

Finally, a bit of a break. looks like the next half of February will be milder. My palm and Citrus greenshouse/garage bombed out at a minimum of 26 F, previous record low was 27 F. Better than I expected with the cycads and palms..., but everything needs WATER. Might actually take out the Date Palms on the weekend, as long as the hose is unfrozen, extended is not that bad, and at this point, it's risk the cold or terminal dehydration! Citrus are surprising, they can suffer 100 % defoliation and yet will regrow leaves once conditions improve.