Latest SE / Mid Atlantic Freeze

[potomacpalms]

Anyone from the Mid Atlantic / South East? I'm in DC and I can't wait for this latest freeze to be over. 4 consecutive nights between 10-15 as a low temperature is pretty rare. So far so good for the windmill palm, pindo, birminghams, palmetto and sabal minors. Washingtonia's arent looking too pretty right now....

[Cindy Adair]

We're 5-10 degrees warmer in Virginia Beach, but that's still way too cold! We don't have any zone pushing palms outside here so the palms are handling it better than we are! So far, the lowest in my greenhouse has been 50, but if one heater malfunctions, as happened last Tuesday-well, I'm glad Home Depot is close by!

[PalmatierMeg]

Welcome to PalmTalk. We owned a cleaning/disaster restoration company through the early 90s. Temps like these were quite common back then. Several days & nights of temps below 20F and people's water pipes would freeze and crack. No problems till temp rose above 32F. Then - Kablooey! - pipes burst and sent freezing water everywhere. So check your water pipes now.

We didn't have access to palms back then, except for Chamaedorea seifrizii aka bamboo palm. But in the late 80s a local nursery brought in queen palms (Syagrus rom). They planted them and the poor things survived until temps hit low 20s - then they fried and looked so pitiful. I actually bought one in a pot for an astronomical $60 (for a queen! What was I thinking?). The seller called them "princess palm" but they were no Dictyosperma. I treated my queen like it was a coconut: outside in April, inside in October. And I fought spider mites all winter. Never again. Wish I'd had internet and PalmTalk back then.

[Cindy Adair]

I'm hoping the 1 to 2 inches of snow that fell in the last few hours will actually offer some protection for the outside plants here. I haven't checked the weather to see how D.C. faired with the snow. We have few if any snow plows so snow frozen hard overnight will be a challenge. Also many people here have no idea how to drive in the snow, meaning they drive as if the roads were dry. In some ways it was easier to get around in the snow in Ohio where everyone expected snow and behaved appropriately.

[JakeK]

I'm in Cincinnati, which is a full zone colder than most of the D.C. area. I gave up on growing the hardiest palms in my current location due to not really wanting to expend that amount of energy to protect them during most winters, and switched to just growing palms seasonally outdoors (far more enjoyable for me). I hope the last cold spell wasn't too bad on your palms. It looks like another blast of arctic air is going to be in my neighborhood later this week and maybe on the east coast a day or so later. Hopefully that one isn't too bad either but it is looking like we may experience the lowest high temperature of the season so far, 21*F.