Here's the lime, next to Lane Late Orange :

If you look hard, you can see 2-3 grafts of Yuzu that have all leaves and wood intact.....

The Variegated Pink Lemon ( which I believe is a Eureka sport) did not fare well either :

On this one, if you look hard...you can see the Variegated Calamondin graft is doing just fine......

Came through it like a CHAMP !!!

Next to it is Washington Navel, then Minneola......

Here you can see a bit of the backyard :

Citrus row...Pruned seedless grapes... and Cherimoya greenhouse :

EZ-- Sorry about your orange and lemon-- glad the others made it.

I am amazed by your grape set up, and I am happy that most of you trees made it through. Good luck for them growing back.

Thanks guys for the well wishes...I do expect both trees to come back...The wood on both look fine, and it looks like fruit and leaves were the major destruction...Let's see in a couple months. The Meyer Lemon is already putting out flowers this week. I'll follow-up with some pics in April.

EZ

EZ, I think we got as cold as you if not colder or longer duration but none of the leaves of your Kieffer lime fell off. They are all shiny and healthy on my 50-n-1 tree! Of course I protected them, to be fair, while you did not cover yours. And also the Kieffer are grafted near the bottom, along with my grapefruits. It is amazing though that the exposed parts of my mandarins got freeze burns from the arctic blast, but no damage anything below them.

Will show pics later. But of course the branch is still small, I grafted it last summer and it hasn't grown that much.

EZ:
I was sulking because some of the tender leaves of my citrus got fried but when I saw some your trees , I did not know I fared well much better.
I will post pics soon also.

Here's a pic of Kaffir lime from EZ, bark grafted into the innermost portion of my 50-n-1 citrus tree. The kaffir branch, I placed it in front of the ladder just for the pics, it was safely out of the way. (The ladder stays there until the various kinds of oranges ripen!, I'm sampling every day).

Of course i always have a back-up branch to graft to. And here's the Kaffir branch that is more exposed to the elements, this one is bark grafted unto the Star Ruby grapefruit branch. It seems to be very happy even after the arctic blast.

Can I say that the Kaffir lime's cold hardiness is now 20 deg F?

Sometimes the results are like magic when you are panicking in the yard trying to protect your trees.

Joe- I doubt Kaffir leaves are hardy to 20 F. WIth your protection, you probably kept inside of tree about 25-30F..... I would guestimate temps in my backyard around 20-22F, so unprotected tree of Kaffir has now lost 100% of leaves, but wood is very green and looks ready to burst back with growth....Anyways, I think you did an EXCELLENT job of protecting your citrus....I preferred to "harden then off", and let them survive (or die) on their own....THey are BIG ENOUGH !! WIll let you know how the Kaffir and Pink Variegated Lemon come back...

EZ, it is now time to be more realistic in my assessment as to why you have more damages than me.

I have placed protection over my trees, but if you did the same, you will still have the same damages. The overhead protection would have been useless, so you saved some labor there. The reason why it would have been useless because of the topography of your yard and the more porous gates that you have. You know, when air cools down, it drains away to the lower elevation. When something gets drained, it gets replaced. Thus you have a lateral flow of very very cold air, coming from the higher elevation, through your front gates, down to the back of your yard. Thus your whole tree, from the bottom to the top, gets exposed to this flow of very cold air and see how the leaves got fried. The top covering only protects from the frost that usually starts at the top. If it were only due to frost, then you will see some green leaves on your Kieffer predominantly in the bottom canopy, so I am confident that your case has the lateral movement of cold air just by virtue of your general topography. I on the other hand have 5 ft fence with very small air gaps, bordering around, and so are our neighbors. The trees are just 3 ft from these fences and so have very effective windbreak protection. The flow of air would be on the upper parts only, and that is where my cold hardy citruses are grafted, and where I placed covers and directed my radiative propane heaters. But nonetheless, the exposed uncovered tender growth of mandarins got singed by the frost, and those are minimal damages. And so you are probably right that the spots where my Kieffer limes are grafted would be 24 to 25 deg F ambient.

But seeing the green stems, I think your Kieffer will bounce back. The stems are cold hardy.

The main usage of Kieffer would be their leaves. What are you going to do with all of those fabulous leaves? They are often sold at a higher price than the fruits. Sometimes we dry these leaves, and eat them together with nuts or mixed with tea. Use them like bay leaves in a lot of recipes that calls for Bay leaves.