What a crazy year it has been so far for temperatures! Here is the thermograph for Blairsville, which is one of the coldest spots in Georgia, with a black horizontal bar at 32 F. It shows that they had a warm winter and almost a month of temperatures above freezing from mid-March to early April with no frost. But then the pattern shifted and frost started occurring again, which caused a lot of problems for the grape growers in that region. And now with this polar outbreak over the weekend, some additional damage is possible. I am just glad that it did not come a month earlier or our blueberries and peaches would have been in more danger.
How do you protect your crops from the effects of these cold air events? Fruit Growers News provided some guidelines this week in their article here. Fortunately, we are approaching the record last date for a spring frost in Georgia and surrounding states, and things look them will warm up once this cold outbreak has passed, so I am hopeful that we have seen the last frost of the spring. Keep in mind that if you know you have areas on your farm that are frost pockets which collect cold air, then you could still see later frosts, but I think this should be the last blast until fall.
