For those of us growing in-ground citrus in the the Southeastern U.S. we're going to get an excellent opportunity to test our cold-protection systems soon. At least five consecutive nights of cold overnight temperatures are expected beginning Saturday night.

It looks like the coldest weather relative to normal will remain east of the Mississippi with readings 12-16 degrees below normal. A good link with extended forecast lows and anomalies is at http://www.hpc.ncep.noaa.gov/medr/medr_min.shtml What will make this event interesting is not the magnitude of the cold, but the duration. In Florence, SC where records go back to 1948 this could be the third longest streak on record of consecutive lows in the lower 20s.

It's been such a cloudy, cool winter so far in my backyard I think the trees are about as dormant and prepared for the cold as they can be. On very cold nights I use tarps or frost cloth with a 60-watt light bulb next to each tree. One of my coworkers had success last winter using christmas lights and tarps. Good luck to us all!

What varieties are you growing? Does it ever get into the teens where you live? My temp. lows are probably a little lower than yours because your closer to the coast even though your farther north. You shouldn't have any trouble growing satsumas, Nippon orangequat, yuzu, C. Taiwanica (nansho daidai), Ichang Papeda, etc. Those are the varieties that I'm going to take a stab at first and see what happens. I'm going to build a frame out of pvc for each individual tree and cover it with greenhouse plastic with a light bulb in each one. It will be like a mini greenhouse for each tree and will be so that sun light can get threw to the trees where I don't have to remove it every morning. People would be surprised how much heat a small light bulb gives off in a closed environment.

The prediction for my area (Gainesville, FL) for the next five days:

Tonight: 30
Saturday: 22
Sunday: 24
Monday: 23
Tuesday: 23
Wednesday: 32

Of course those are only the predictions. We'll see what I actually get.

Glad I've got a greenhouse!

.....Alan.

We're getting about the same prediction here Skeeter. We'll see what we really get though.

40 today
49 sat
48 Sunday
47 Monday
it is gonna be a chiller today in the rio grande valley

I'm growing a little of everything I have room for in my tiny yard: two Satsuma varieities, 10-Degree tangerine, Yuzu, Ichang Lemon, Changsha Mandarin, Ambersweet Orange, Sanbokan Lemon, and Bloomsweet Grapefruit. A coworker gave me a potted Croxton Grapefruit that I'm still trying to figure out where to fit in!

We normally dip into the upper teens a couple of times a year here, but sustained cold events (like starting this weekend) are rare. Digging through the climate records at work last night I found that in terms of the length of cold weather forecast, this event should be comparable to January 2001, February 1996, and December 1989. That last date gives me literal (and figurative) shivers since Wilmington got down to zero, the all-time record low for the city.

Each NWS office's local climate page has a link called "NOWData" that lets you do detailed climate searches for any location with observational data. Gadsden, AL has been as low as -6, Pensacola's hit 5, Charleston SC 6 degrees, and Gainesville's been down to 10 before. If we ever get a repeat of weather like that I wonder if any cold-protection technique would prevent major damage?

I wanted to add I'm growing temperate fruit trees too that actually appreciate this kind of weather: apples, peaches, cherries, and apricots. One particularly warm winter (2002-2003 maybe?) we apparently didn't accumulate the needed number of chilling hours and my apple trees limped out of dormancy about a month late and looked sad all through the summer. It's a unique climate we live in to (usually) be able to grow such a variety of fruit!

We hit 33 last night, but now they are predicting freezing nights for the next 7 nights--the lowest was 22. That was a TV forecast and may include more inland areas, but in any case it is going to be cold for a while!

We missed the predicted thirty last night by four degrees which I am hoping they'll miss by at least as much for the next five nights because we're now down to twenty degrees for Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday and twenty two for tonight and Wednesday! This is getting out of hand...

.....Alan.

Looks like 19 degrees for me the next two nights, then lower to middle 20s for lows through the coming weekend. This is brutal stuff.

Here's a few pictures of my trees all decked out for cold weather. I stuck the camera up under the cover for that last picture -- it really does look cozy in there! I'm using commercial frost cloth (12 feet wide x 100 feet long) with some plastic drop cloths (usually used for painting) clothes-pinned over top. It's windy and I figure that will help prevent too much heat loss.

We hit 28 last night--predicted low. Worst is yet to come with a low of 22 late in the week.

We hit twenty eight last night for about two hours which is much better than the twenty two that had been predicted. Hopefully we'll miss by at least that much for the rest of this cold spell.

.....Alan.

26 F here last night.