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Used some tarps and 8 ft stakes at an angle to create a northerly wind block. Ran C9 lights under them. Also made some visqueen greenhouses on some smaller palms in the yard, and within the tarp windbreak. Palms that are protected: Coccothrinax Azul Coccothrinax Hiorami Pinanga Adagensis Thrinax Radiata Chamaedorea CostaRicana, Ernesti Augustii, Microspadix and Cataractarum Chambeyronia Macrocarpa Howea Forsteriana Palms that are going to die: Chrysalidocarpus Pembana, Lanceolata Chambeyronia Oliviformis Archontophoenix Myolensis, Tuckeri Sabal Mauritiformis Palms that got the crown wrapped and C9 lights and will defoliate: Archontophoenix Cunninghamiana x2 Beccariophoenix Alfredii. Forecast for SW Volusia 24 tonight, and 27 Sunday night.

"Before" pictures after heavy pruning. "Jamaican tall" leaned over by Irma: Sprouted from a tall neighborhood tree that survived the >50% mortality of 2010: Sprouted from a neighborhood of maypans that all survived 2010: Sprouted from a tall nursery tree later struck by lightening , possible pacific tall:

I wrapped my coconut trunk with 5w heating cables and christmas lights. Wrapped it with burlap amd frost cloth and did end up building a frame. I run a 30,000 BTU heat thrower into the frame with hope that the heat rises through the crown. With anticipated winds, I'm gonna need lots of blocking of the winds from neighbor's homes. Still worth a try!

First hard freeze tonight on the space coast barrier iskand since 1989. Hundreds of coconut and other tropical palms in the neighborhood are going to die. Need to get out this morning and wrap my 4 coconut trees in pipe-warming wire, moving blankets and tarps this before the gale-force winds start after noon, hoping the 60 inch zip ties I bought are sufficient to secure everything in the expected high winds. My mangos and pembana palm are on their own. Ordered a wireless temperature recording station on recommendation here to monitor temperatures tonight.

My students and I have been landscaping our school for 40 years and we have a long-tested collection of Sabal palms. I thought that people in zone 8* would be interested in what can be grown long term. The coldest temps these palms have experienced is low teens. I will add more pics if people are interested. The list: S. causiarum, S. minor, S. tamaulipensis, S. rosei, S. x texensis, S. uresana (green and silver), S. pumos, S. bermudana, S. mexicana, S. etonia, S. palmetto Lisa. (4 years old). Added last summer: S. blackburniana, S. miamiensis. In our area, S. palmetto reseeds like crazy. S. minor is native and common in low lying areas. Rhapidophyllum and Serenoa are native about 1 hour south of town. Pictures in order top to bottom: S. causiarum, S. uresana (silver), S. tamaulipensis, S. Lisa, S. Riverside, S. palmetto

You read my mind. This is going to be historic for east Florida. If the forecast holds, it will break all time records for the coldest temperatures on the space and treasure coasts for the month of February. Just wrapped up my coconut palm and my Dypsis baronii. I'm using a heated blanket to cover the heart of my coconut palm and Christmas lights and blankets to cover the cores as much as I can.

For those of you cutting off palm leaves, or branches of trees/shrubs : Don't forget that the leaves you cut off the palms can be reused to protect the plant. You can pile the big leaves over other small plants to act as a barrier to wind. Or use them to weigh down tarps, etc. I always try to reuse them in some way to help cover some plants. - Matt

I made a 13 hour drive home last night in time for the cold but besides wrapping up the bismarkias and bringing the potted bottle and foxtails inside I’m letting everything ride. Forecast for last night was 27 but only got to 31 here. Good sign perhaps. Tomorrow morning my phone and TWC agree on 21 degrees. I think I already have some mild damage to my livistona and washingtonias from last weekends 22 degrees. with this freeze I’m interested to see how my dioon edule does. It hasn’t seen these temps before. Actually looks fine for now. good luck to all tonight.

Good luck everyone. We just had a similar cold event to what Orlando's about to get and it’s brutal for palms. Please protect what you can if you haven’t already. Also, I suggest starting a new thread to document low temperatures with Wunderground screenshots. It could be a useful reference later.

When building my coconut frame, several old husks fell. Great insulators! I lined my young Christmas palm with them and set the C9 on them before wrapping.

NWS is forecasting 34F as the low for tonight for my area. Then 31F Sunday night and then 36F for Monday night. I’m sure Sunday and Monday night will be colder than they have my forecast for as it will be more radiational by that time. I’m not going to protect anything. Everything I have is just too big and not particularly exotic or irreplaceable anyway. I do have a C. macrocarpa that I’d hate to lose but I kinda want to test it out against the cold anyway. If stuff dies here this winter then it probably just isn’t going to work here long term anyway. I took some pictures of the yard this morning so I can post some before and after photos. Some of my palms already have some cold damage on them from the frost earlier this week. Good luck to all!

The cold is really digging in this winter across the northern hemisphere. All 3 continents - North America, Europe and Asia have seen record cold now. First Asia with the record breaking Siberian cold in Nov/Dec. This January it has been Canada and USA with record breaking cold. Scandinavia has had it as well in late December / early January. Now a new record cold wave is about to begin in Eastern Europe as well.

I took this pic of a friend Vai Nu'usa in western Samoa on the island of Upolo. I thought it was a different species, but Dr. Hodel said it was B. insularis. They were quite prolific there up by Stevenson's place on the mountain. in deep jungle

HRRR (18z) seems to show a ‘worst case’ scenario with model runs materially cooler than the NWS prediction for both tomorrow and Monday AM. As always, go with the professionals, but will be interesting to see how certain models perform. Good luck, everyone.

Wrapped up my Caribbean stuff yesterday. All 4 Pseudophoenix, Coccothrinax Hiorami,Camaguyena,Borhidiana,Alta,Azul, and crinata Also my Copernicia rigida and bailyana. Fallensis and Gigas look tough after 29 degrees so i left them to rough it out. Crinata had minimal damage at 29 degrees even at 24” size. All the other Coccothrinax sp were down to spear plus 1-2 each. I also wrapped my favorite sabals that i dont wish to push past 29 yet. They were unaffected by 29 degrees. Antillesis and Loughidiana Got an Acrocomia acuelata that’s burned down to the spear but I didn’t give it any extra help for tonight. I rooted really deeply as a 1gal before i got any new fronds so it should bounce back. I choose this portion of property to plant the natives as it maximizes daylight hours year-round…especially important in the winter though. The berms are sugar sand with soil amended in planting pits only.

I went ahead and wrapped up my foxtail as best as I could. Surely this will be enough to protect it. I also wrapped up the fronds of my king palm that's under canopy and my cunninghamiana that's in the open air (even though cunninghamiana are supposed to be more cold hardy iirc?). The foxtail's fronds are big enough that I think the cover should be safe in the wind, or at least I sure hope so.

This is what everyone being in the same boat looks like when the boat is called The Titanic:

Ok let me please share an impression regarding the very similar rpw. I think that its activity and/or reproduction rate decreases considerably with increased air moisture combined with high temps. I have witnessed countless times palms growing side by side one exposed to full sun and the other under canopy and former being infested and killed, while latter was remaining at laest seemingly healthy. Perhaps this is one of the reasons that tropics are still full of palms.

It's going to be a depressing topic. Ryan

@idontknowhatnametuse took the initiative to create a thread for all of us to post photos and observations of the damage of various species of palms in our gardens. After the event, we'll probably all give it a little since the damage will get progressively worse for anything left alive. You can check out the initial post here: https://www.palmtalk.org/forum/topic/92659-2026-florida-palmageddon-observations-and-damage-photo-thread/ On a separate note, there's been speculation that this would change the USDA Hardiness Map back to the 2012 or 1990 version. This is largely incorrect, and may potentially be a misunderstanding on what a USDA Hardiness Zone represents. A USDA Hardiness Zone is the Average Annual Low for 30 years (AAL). If we use a theoretical location where the average annual low for 30 years was 31.8F, rounded down to 31F to produce a more conservative map, and as an example, updated the map after that theoretical location went down to 25F this year. This means the first year of the range would come off the rolls and be replaced by this year's minimum temperature. The math would look like this (after rounding): 31F x 29 years = 899 25F x 1 year = 25 ===================== TOTAL: 924 AVERAGE: 924 / 30 = 30.8 ROUND USING FLOOR() FUNCTION: 30F = 10a Even using a more conservative algorithm than the USDA uses, this location would still be a zone 10a climate. The landscape may not look like it, but that's not a fault of the algorithm. Assuming that any climate will always default to an average is the issue. There was even a discussion about this some time back: https://www.palmtalk.org/forum/topic/26687-usda-hardiness-zone-is-not-a-good-way-to-have-a-abstract-view-on-minimum-temperatures/ If you would like to base your plantings on a more reliable number, the record lows as well as other calculations like zones for 50 and 100 year averages are available in the almanac on the next to last post on the second page of this thread: https://www.palmtalk.org/forum/topic/66320-florida-freeze-and-weather-station-data/?page=2 SPOILER: The theoretical location was Orlando International Airport (KMCO)

Some nice colour on this Butia odorata inflorescence.

why does it gets much colder east of the Rockies during the Winter? The Rockies are the problem. The act as a high and effective barrier that prevents milder Pacific air from spreading east. Their presence helps to amplify the troughs associated with Canadian cold air masses, which can spread south like water on a flat table, all the way down to the Gulf. Ever notice how they always pour down from the same area into the US? Florida, at least, is surrounded by warm water, which usually acts as a modifier to continental air masses. I suspect that the models that forecasters use tend to underplay the efficiency of dense, shallow cold air movement at the surface. These same models also sometimes underestimate radiational cooling that occurs when the cold settles in before modifying and moving out. NWS forecasters sometimes, I think, seem to go with a more conservative approach in forecasting. They might forecast temperatures that are a bit colder than what materialIzes, as a precaution.

Here is my Foxtail a week after my ultimate low of the season and only night below freezing. Hit 26.8, I can no longer reach the fronds to protect, so they were on their own. I’m pleasantly surprised. A little bit torched but really looking pretty good considering. Better than the Royals at least.

I lost all of the leaves on this one last winter (skimpy protection to save the bud). These are all 2025 leaves (pic from December 2025). This is a few years old direct seeded Hopefully it still looks +/- like this when the covers come off tomorrow. I probably damaged all the emerging spears trying to make the covers fit 😕 Is winter over yet ???!

I will report back after this passes and let you know what made it and what croaked. I’m saying good bye to the cocos.

C9's are the way to go. I used them with great success when I had to protect smaller palms years ago. Thankfully, we haven't had a real freeze in the Phoenix area in over 14 years.🤞🙏 aztropic Mesa, Arizona

27 to 32 seems to be my range to witch isn't horrible if we can plan for it correctly.

Still leaning toward no protection here, but I would like to keep my two large coconuts. Decisions...

I have no clue where these Orlando temps are coming from but those are not official or even correct. There was no freeze in Nov and there is no way Bay Lake was 28 when MCO was 37. The airport his 32 in Jan and about 6 to 8 more nights in mid to upper 30s. I've had no freeze yet in Belle Isle but my coconut has lower frond damage like Eric. The biggest hit was the 37 in Nov because it was a shock as there had been no cool down coming out of summer. I saw damage show up soon after that.

For smaller palms, etc I will use reflective bubble roll insulation., pots, and mulch I usually wrap it around the entire palm, in a cylindrical shape, somtimes 2-4 layers. Or I cut it to wrap it around the inside of a large pot, say 25 G pot. Then I also make sure that the bottom of the pot is coveted by this insulation. Then on the outside I use weather resistant duct tape to cover the pot drain holes I usually will bury the palm in mulch up to the bottom portion of the spear. Then I cover the plant with the pot, and pile more mulch around the base of the overturned pot. Stick some rocks on top to hold it down from strong winds. For me this seems to work well for temps down into the low teens. Never had any damage to leaves, etc. when I cover the entire plant. I'll take some pics tomorrow morning of a few palms that I currently have covered this way. - Matt

Isaac Dawley home in Santa Paula. House and Palms still standing or they where when my grandmother showed me where it was. She was born there but it has long since been someone else’s farm.

Found this on that street in Santa Paula which probably is the wrong street number but those Phoenix canariensis would be about the same age as the ones in your black and white photo.

Anything that directly touches the box or bucket has a good chance of burn. But my testing with a plain cardboard box over a palm showed 5 or so degrees warmer in the box than outside. That was using an optical thermometer outside and inside. It might be even more useful with a windy night. It works, even if it's not perfect.

Here’s B seemannii at Singapore Botanic Hardens, photo taken last year. Like many others in the Prychospermatinae family they have those wide praemorse leaflets that just give off the tropical vibe.

I'll let you know how this beccariophoenix does in Orlando. Current forecast is 25F. Way too big to protect so I'll just water the soil well

HI All, long time lurker, first time poster. Thought I'd post some new growth to keep you going through your quiet season. Cycas Thouarsii Emerging leaf on a Ferox I removed the old leaves when the new leaves started flushing on this Lehmanii as they were 3 seasons old and a bit shabby. Plant had coned 3 seasons in a row and only put flushes on puppies which I removed this past winter. More puppies already showing again can be seen on the caudex. Cycas Petraea coming along.

This is a Butia x Jubaea hybrid that I purchased years ago from Dr. Merrill Wilcox. It has held its silver color beautifully. The picture doesn't do it justice. Augusta, GA

I started mine from seed back in 2022 and planted them that summer. They managed to survive 17° in December of 2022 ❄️. With just a bucket and some hope lol .

Heres the NWS forecast for the state of FL by region: Northwestern Florida: Central & Eastern Panhandle: Northeastern Florida: East Central Florida: West Central Florida: Southern Florida:

I have two parts to the green house. the middle area with a bench has a small greenhouse heater fan for days I want to go outside and sit in the sun. So it’s more for me but air does flow thru a little since it’s not air tight. I use lexan glass to make the windows and it gets a lot of heat naturally from the sun with granite and other rocks around the enclosure. Plus it’s on the south side of a foundation with a full basement behind the wall. It’s a good micro climate that’s for sure. The three palms I stuck with are the hardiest such as a windmill palm tree, a few needle palms and 5 sabel minor shrubs.

The initial front has moved through here. It was in the high 40’s last evening, now it’s 33deg at 8am and hardly rising, showing 37 as the high. 🥶 Quite brutal. This is similar to the Christmas 2022 freeze where it basically didn’t get higher than the 30’s for about 2 days all under sunny skies.

There will be damage but I bet most will recover.

Licuala orbicularis in the Coffs Harbour botanical gardens.

Those Canaries are super tall now I’m sure! Do you have the street address so we can view on Google Street View?

I took some pics before the storm today. I think the worst cold is mostly over here. Hope so anyways. Sabal ‘Alabama” has been sitting in frozen pine straw for a week.

Let the digging begin! Soil is soft, did this in about 10 mins and the palm is loose and ready to be popped onto a tarp tomorrow morning.

Things are ridiculously resilient. In some of my traps, then I forget to put a killing agent in the water they swim for seven plus days before finally dying and drowning.

Oh my! What a display. Harry

I Made these with AI but using my knowledge of basics of how to build these. Some have a few minor flaws but best I could get. PDF https://drive.google.com/file/d/12f8trXTYwQmtlZc45rHfeTRD5k8pf1dm/view?usp=drive_link