Freeze Durations

[ZoneTenNut]

Scanning through all the SoCal freeze threads, I'm just blown away by the number of hours below freezing many are experiencing and how this will affect their palms.

What are your experiences and how cold for how long? What kind of damage did you receive from it and what made it and what didn't? What did you do to protect your stuff, if anything? What microclimates helped (ie. southern side of house)? Windbarriers?

Here in West Palm Beach, Florida, we hit upper 20's in the 89 arctic blast, but temps quickly rebounded, so the duration wasn't long. As such, many things got burned, but survived. Curious to know what others experiences have been, on a prolonged cold snap.

[SubTropicRay]

Roger,

In 1989, Tampa bottomed out at 24F and was below freezing starting at 4PM on Christmas Eve.  The temps didn't rise above 32F until after 11AM on Christmas Day.  The high temp was somewhere in the upper 30'sF.  I hope to never see that again.

Ray

[BS Man about Palms]

Most nights the "under 32" was less than a few hours for me

[Kim]

I don't know the duration for the previous nights (I was sleeping).  This morning when I got up at 5:15am the temp was 34.  At 6:40 it hit 32, but the sun was up and I'm pretty sure it went back up before 7.  However, I still found water frozen in the birdbath.  Short duration, but still plenty of stress on the plants.

[ZoneTenNut]

(Ray, Tampa @ Jan. 16 2007,07:06)

QUOTE

Roger,

In 1989, Tampa bottomed out at 24F and was below freezing starting at 4PM on Christmas Eve.  The temps didn't rise above 32F until after 11AM on Christmas Day.  The high temp was somewhere in the upper 30'sF.  I hope to never see that again.

Ray

Thats a long stretch below freezing. How did things fare in the months afterwards? How quickly did temps move back up? 1,2,3 days?

[SubTropicRay]

December of 1989 sucked even before the Christmas freeze.

December 1989 in Tampa

[SubTropicRay]

Miami in December of 1989

[ZoneTenNut]

Ray,

Nice graph. So that ended up lasting the typical 1-3 days cold snap, just much colder than normal, then the dramatic jump back up in temps.

I remember it frying alot of stuff in the area, but don't remember it killing much. The two huge clumps of D. Lutescens in front at my folks, had the leaves burned, but after a few rains, had pushed out a bunch of new fronds, so they didn't suffer any long term damage.

[SubTropicRay]

Roger,

I've noticed that it's unusual for the worst cold snaps we get to last for more than 3 nights.  That said, three nights is bad enough.  I just posted this to give the folks in California some perspective. Unfortunately, mother nature gets us all at some point.  

Ray

[BobbyinNY]

I've noticed that it's unusual for the worst cold snaps we get to last for more than 3 nights.  That said, three nights is bad enough.  I just posted this to give the folks in California some perspective. Unfortunately, mother nature gets us all at some point.  

Ray

Yeah, but Ray I think the difference in Florida vs. California is that, in Florida, the event will last 2-3-days at most, but then the temps quickly rebound to 70's/60's and new growth can start and make up for the damage... where in SoCal, the temps are still relatively cold (60's/40's) so the plants may die from constant stress...... OR maybe they can take the cold snap better becuase they've been more prepared for it..... I guess time will tell.

[ZoneTenNut]

Exactly Bobby, its that constant cold stress over time that I wonder which palms can take how much. I have only had about 4 very light frosts since '98' and by light, I mean maybe an hour if that, of cool enough temps to produce frost.  But on one of these cold snaps, where I had about two hours of around 32F, some of my more sensitive palms like Iriartea Deltoida, Hydriastele Kasesa, and Lemurophoenix Halleuxii, bit the dust. Granted these were very small and one was still a seedling in a one gal. pot, but they just couldn't take that much cold. The Iriartea Deltoida, had been in the ground for about 3 or 4 years and had weathered a couple other light frosts, with not even a burned leaf. All these were under canopy, not out in open.