And this morning came in at 17. Greenhouse still OK. All the chicken waterers froze solid again like they did the night before. The ice I dumped out of them yesterday was still on the ground this morning.

Slow warmup predicted for the rest of the week. This coming weekend is predicted to be pretty nice.

.....Alan.

I just averaged our temperatures for the first 10 days of 2010. Average low is 22.6 Average high is 41.4. We have not had a day where the temps failed to go above freezing.. although there were a couple in the 36F range.. Our over winter low so far is 15F. I hope to post some pictures later on of my satsuma grove. I think most of them will have survived this round of global warming.. not sure how much more they will endure.

Geez ... all that cold weather can't be good for the citrus hobbiest or commercial growers. It's made the news every night up here in Canada and by comparison we woke up to 47ºF this morning on the west coast. Hope you guys get back to normal temps real soon.

Cheers, Barrie.

Hey Barrie, I remember, you guys got yours last year! The whole middle and eastern half of the US got the freeze this time.. from Texas to Tampa.. its been a bone chiller. I posted some pictures that I took today in this same " inground citrus" forum. Check out my satsuma grove, before and after! I plan on eating some fresh citrus in fall 2010!

The weather service called it nearly on the money this time. They predicted we'd go to twenty last night and we made twenty one. I still have ice on the ground that I dumped out of the chicken waterers Sunday afternoon.

They're calling for 26 tonight then up to 34 come Wednesday with a progressive warm up till the weekend when it's supposed to rain.

I just did the same calculation that Stan did. From January 1st through the 12th the average low temperature at my place has been 25 degrees. Considering that we didn't get our first real frost until the day after Christmas this is turning into a winter to remember.

.....Alan.

We had a long spell of bitter cold--at least 4 nights with a low of 21 or lower--the lowest was 19, 2 nights ago. They said that was the last of it, but we had 28 this morning and they are predicting 28 again tonight. I think, if this is the end, it will be 11 or 12 straight nights below freezing--the record is 14 days.

I have felt guilty all summer that I did not plant any citrus in the ground this year. But after the whipping I took last year I didn't have the heart for it. All of the replacement trees I bought (and more besides) I repotted into larger containers. They're all safe and sound in the greenhouse right now. For once procrastination has paid off!

This is two years running that we've had unusually cold tree killing weather. I'm going to have to rethink my entire in-ground strategy. Our first frost came so late this year (nearly four weeks) that I was beginning to hope for a mild winter...

.....Alan.

I am thinking about moving to Homestead, Florida to escape all the future killer freezes. The arctic express cannot reach down that far. Fighting freezes sucks! You have to be out there all night in the frigid cold!

I had to cover my Myer Lemon trees in this freeze and had a very hard time. The wind was so strong it blew off the cover three times! The low for this freeze was around 22F but the weather for the week before the freeze was cold. There does not appear to be any damage to any of my citrus trees.

Twenty seven last night, twenty eight the night before. Tonight we're supposed to only go into the forties. Hooray!

In fourteen nights we've had just one night above freezing.

.....Alan.

Same here! Yahoo!

Ditto here in NC. We just finished up with the coldest stretch of weather I've experienced here. Aside from the brutal winters in the 1890s, only the winter of 1939-1940 comes up with similar numbers of sub-freezing nights here. At least the covers and lights saved my trees!

Out of the 14 days so far this year, 13 have been below freezing. Here's the monthly summary from my backyard weather station through early this afternoon:

                  MONTHLY CLIMATOLOGICAL SUMMARY FOR 1/2010


                                        HEAT  COOL        


     MEAN                               DEG   DEG       WIND SPEED       DOM MEAN  MEAN


DAY  TEMP  HIGH   TIME     LOW   TIME   DAYS  DAYS RAIN AVG  HI  TIME    DIR BAROM HUM


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


1    48.3  57.5  12:00am  38.7  11:59pm   17    0  0.01   3  17   2:55pm NNW 29.92   89


2    32.8  38.7  12:00am  27.9  11:54pm   32    0  0.00   6  32  11:18am NNW 30.01   55


3    29.4  36.1   3:43pm  22.7   7:27am   36    0  0.00   6  27  11:07am NNW 30.02   42


4    30.1  38.9   3:29pm  23.0   7:30am   35    0  0.00   4  22   1:17pm NNW 29.97   52


5    31.4  38.9   3:15pm  23.9   7:48am   33    0  0.00   4  26   2:58pm NNW 29.97   57


6    33.3  41.8   3:30pm  25.7   7:32am   32    0  0.00   4  24   3:01pm NNW 30.02   57


7    37.2  47.8   2:41pm  24.2   7:52am   27    0  0.01   2  15  11:20pm  SW 30.06   60


8    39.8  46.8   4:30am  29.1  11:55pm   25    0  0.02   6  29   2:32pm NNW 29.96   58


9    28.0  36.2   4:01pm  21.8  11:59pm   34    0  0.00   2  15   2:50am NNE 30.17   59


10   29.0  38.4   3:41pm  21.2  12:56am   36    0  0.00   3  25   3:08pm NNE 30.27   57


11   32.4  48.3   3:42pm  17.8   7:26am   33    0  0.00   2  15   3:58pm  SW 30.27   60


12   39.0  45.8   2:26pm  31.2  11:16pm   26    0  0.00   3  18  11:53am NNW 30.16   52


13   34.7  47.0   3:50pm  25.2   6:07am   30    0  0.00   1  10   9:02am  SW 30.31   64


14   32.8  51.7  12:46pm  25.2   6:02am   17    0  0.00   1  12  11:47am WSW 30.31   76


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


TOT  34.2  57.5   1/1/10  17.8  1/11/10  412    0  0.04   3  32   1/2/10 NNW 30.09   59

-Tim