We’ve been doing well avoiding frost for the last few weeks as our blueberries and peaches bloomed, and I thought for a while that we might squeak by without another frost, at least in the southern states of our region. But it looks like another brief cold outbreak could bring frost to a wide part of the Southeast on Friday morning. The southern parts of Alabama and Georgia are probably going to miss the frost as well as lower elevations in South Carolina and southeastern North Carolina, but other areas could see temperatures below freezing. Some folks have pointed out that we often get a freeze around Easter, but since the date of Easter moves around it is hard to tie that to climate statistics, which are based on specific dates.
It looks to me like this will be just a one-night event rather than a multi-day outbreak at this point. If you have frost-sensitive plants, you will want to think about frost protection measures if they are available to you. You can use NWS hourly forecasts to help determine how long the temperatures will be at critical levels, since most plants can take a little freezing weather. You can read about how to do it at https://site.extension.uga.edu/climate/2018/03/where-to-get-hourly-weather-forecast-information/.
Frost is a tricky thing to forecast, and it would not surprise me if the extent of the freezing conditions changes somewhat between now and then. So check your local forecasts to get the most current information, and keep in mind that frost can also vary on very small scales with the rises and dips in the local terrain. One forecast for the possible temperature distribution on Friday morning is shown below. I have seen other maps which bring the freezing line a little farther south than this one, especially in North Carolina. Once this passes, I don’t see another cold outbreak coming, so this could be the last frost for this spring for the southern part of our region.
