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If the bud is still alive it'll start pushing the "dead" spear further up to "normal" length anyway. If the bud is ok the biggest risk is a fungal infection. For anything within reach I'll be doing a hydrogen peroxide pour and follow up with Daconil. Hopefully that'll be a good preventative for things that don't have a D-E-D bud or trunk daamage. I will probably do a soil drench of Banrot or Alliette on many palms and cycads, starting tomorrow. I am not planning on cutting any fronds or chopping anything down until March, except in cases where it's blatantly obvious. There are some small seedlings that are obviously burnt to a crisp and have no chance. I'll be marking a lot of spears horizontally with a sharpie to check for movement.

I wasn't able to get an accurate measurement in my yard due to all the drifting, but Swansboro in Onslow County recorded 17 inches and Peletier in Carteret County recorded 19.5 inches. Both communities are within a few miles of me.

The NWS recorded a minimum of 24.3F overnight at ~4:15AM. Temperatures in my yard ranged from 26F-28F. The forecasts throughout the area was for 27F-28F, so respectably close. It wasn't as mild as @pj_orlando_z9b's place, but better than another 24F on the board. The forecast tonight is for 30F. At this point, there's a chance that a few of the damaged palms here will live, but if we get another spell like this, they'll definitely be headed to the mulch pile. The lineup for the first half of the month is less than impressive by our standards:

Temperature is the same now as it was last night at this time. Not looking good another night in the low mid 20s. Insane.

Hi, I’m late to the party and I’ve seen that the freeze has gone by, but there are a variety of protection methods posted in the past on this forum to explore. My main caution is against having heating elements directly in contact with the palm, to avoid burns. A more lingering problem with coconuts, though, is long-term winter coolness. Long periods of winter highs below 70F is not great for coconuts, and I’ve read that they stop photosynthesis around 50F. It’s why they are virtually impossible to grow in California, even if never exposed to temps below 40F. I believe this is the main distinction between a Jacksonville and Orlando 9b climate as discussed earlier in the thread. Average daily January highs and lows are ~72F and ~50F in Orlando, but ~65F and ~45F in Jacksonville, maybe ~50F in the microclimates. I tried to keep a coconut at my parents house (Beaches area microclimate with recent zone-pushers like king palms in the area) years ago, on the south face of the house facing a retention pond w/ partial canopy. It still almost died after an average winter, even after protecting it each time the temps dropped below 40F. The next winter did it in. Pritchardia Pacifica is another palm that is technically hardy down to 32F or so, but starts taking damage below 50F and is very fussy with prolonged coolness. I do wish you the best in pushing the envelope, though, and you may want to look into the many varieties of coconuts that have different documented “coolness” tolerances.

Zone 8a palms after a sleet storm and a 15°F low with 50 consecutive below freezing and almost 2 inches of ice in Dallas Today was 71°F early February Dallas temps 2026

23 low with wind chill down to ~6-7 in Jacksonville, Florida. wrapped well and protected. Dead.

I went ahead and put the Lepidorrachis in the ground today, since the weather dial in CA seems to be permanently set to "warm/sunny". I chose the more sheltered spot. It'll remain in good shade throughout the year and I hope it will do well. The trunk at the top left of the second photo is cousin Hedy.

Whups, one more comparison photo! I had a couple Saribus on the left (Robinsoniana and Rotundifolia) and a Livistona Speciosa on the right. Big difference! Small Beccariophoenix Alfredii in the backyard look really awful, but the new spears are still green:

23 low with wind chill down to ~6-7 in Jacksonville, Florida. minor protection wrapping the trunk and crown, 80% burn. hoping this will pull through. It had seen ~26 unprotected with only minor (10%) frond damage. very marginal here in 9a, but a tough little palm.

And a couple of last photos for today. The two Alfredii are peeking up over the mass of dead Tiger Grass leaves, but the Sabal Mauritiiformis looks pretty good! Encephalartos Ituriensis on the left is pretty bad...: I didn't get a good photo of the Copernicia Baileyana today, but it looks really good. The fans of the below Fallaensis peeking up in the middle are a bit burnt, but the other sheltered ones look fine. The Cycas Multipinnata is defoliated, and the crimson red Dioon Spinulosum on the right is impressive. A small Syagrus Schizophylla in the lower middle looks D-E-D, which is surprising. I thought Schizophylla was pretty hardy. The Furfuracea is crispy as expected, and even the lower left Dioon Merolae isn't happy: And this is the "Whole Leaf" mutant Elaeis Guineensis with complete burn up top. The lower petioles are still green, so hopefully it'll have enough energy to grow back: Here's the somewhat damaged Ptychosperma Schefferi on the left, a wilty Cycas Multipinnata in the middle, and a plant I hadn't even noticed before. In the upper right is a "volunteer" Cycas Micholitzii. I thought it was an offset from the Multipinnata, but it's about 2 feet away! There are some surprisingly good successes out there, like unprotected Syagrus Amara, Sancona and Lorenzoniorum seedlings in good shape. A batch of Kerriodoxa Elegans, Licuala Ramsayi and Distans and Sumawongii, Chuniophoenix Hainanensis and Nana all looking like there wasn't even a cold front. Others are probably already D-E-D like Ravenea Hildebrandtii, Dypsis Cabadae, Syagrus Schizophylla, Cyphophoenix Alba, Nucele and Elegans, and a couple of Burretiokentia Hapala and Viellardii. But then there's a 5' tall Carpentaria Acuminata that looks so far really good...go figure.

23 low with wind chill down to ~6-7 in Jacksonville, Florida. no protection, minor (20%) frond damage.

How much snow did you get?

23 low with wind chill down to ~6-7 in Jacksonville, Florida. Covered in burlap and wrapped. Dead. My Foxtail is in a more vulnerable location, worse wrapped, and may yet pull through. I know there was hope of a couple degrees of extra hardiness from the parent of the hybrid, this does not seem the case.

23 low with wind chill down to ~6-7 in Jacksonville, Florida. no protection, no damage

The damage was pretty severe at my place. A quadruple king and a single archontophoenix cunninghamiana are both almost certainly dead. My bigger foxtail's fronds are looking very brown and the spear has shriveled up, so I don't know if it has any chance of a recovery. Its crownshaft is still fairly green, for now, so I don't know if that provides any room for hope, but it doesn't look good.

23 low with wind chill down to ~6-7 in Jacksonville, Florida. Minor wrapping around the heart, no damage.

Imagine if this event hit 4-5 weeks ago in late December / early January when days were at their shortest and sunlight intensity at it's lowest too. So less daytime recovery between nighttime radiation freezes and an extra hour of cooling overnight. Pretty sure that would have also made the airmass even cooler as it passed over CONUS for the same reasons. Come late January / early February that airmass, while freezing cold still from it's point of origin downwards, it would have been slightly modified by the strengthening sun and slightly longer days as it descends south. At least compared to a few weeks earlier. The absolute worst cold potential will always be in late December / early January, close to New Years. So no matter how bad an event is in say perhaps early December, or anytime in February, you can count your lucky stars that the same airmass didn't roll in around New Years when it can maximise its potential. The same logic can be applied to the early-mid December 2022 freeze for us here, or the February 2018 event here. If either of those two freezes came around the New Years period, it would have been even more brutal. The same goes for this Florida freeze. If that airmass that hit Texas in mid-Feb 2021 actually came in early January you can only imagine just how bad it would have been.

I posted the same photos and info in the Freeze Damage thread here: https://www.palmtalk.org/forum/topic/92659-2026-florida-palmageddon-observations-and-damage-photo-thread Here's a view of the windy 22.6F and then 24.4F with light frost does to the backyard: The two Bottles on the right were already badly damaged from previous upper 20s frosts. The foxtails and fishtails on the right are almost completely brown. Oddly enough the Ptychosperma Schefferi just behind the Bottles looks discolored but maybe ok? I really thought that one was a wimp? The Alfredii looks much worse today than yesterday, and has turned a sickly olive. To the right of the Alfredii a Cryosophila Warscewiczii looks really good, but Cyphophoenix Nucele and Elaeis Guineensis "Whole Leaf" mutant are torched. On the left a Dioon Spinulosum and Dypsis/Chrysalidocarpus Lanceolata are torched. Elsewhere Lutescens and Pembana are equally burnt. Not quite visible is a badly burned Attalea Brejinhoensis, and of course on the far left a Sabal "Lisa" looks like nothing happened. Up front I had more tender species, since it's usually a few degrees warmer in the front yard: The 3 Kings on the right are likely dead, the Arenga Pinnata hard to say, and the giant Encephalartos Ituriensis is defoliated. The Arenga Pinnata new spear is brown at the tip but green further down, so it might grow out soon? Around the front a bunch of Encephalartos are also badly burned, with Ituriensis, Laurentianus and Gratus x Laurentianus at least partially defoliated. The "Jesse Durko" bamboo is rapidly becoming a mass of sticks: On the East side the Philodendron Selloum turned to stinky mush the first night. On the far left a Butia shrugged it off, but a pair of Kings are scarlet red. Just below the octagon window another Elaeis Guineensis is torched just as bad as the background fishtail and right foreground Arenga Pinnata. The box in the bottom foreground covered a Corypha Umbraculifera. With the box as protection the fans were burnt off but the petioles and new spear still look ok: Just to the left of the above photo a pair of 20+ foot Alfredii still look tattered but reasonably decent. The Encephalartos Kisambo shrugged it off:

behold: goats Borassus also love flood plains. Typically, these tropical flood plains are dry much of the year but then flood each rainy season. That's where the really big ones like to grow.

Wow @Merlyn it sure is a hard sight to see, but I bet you are going to have some miraculous recoveries amongst your collection still. Will also be good data to see the limits of cold tolerance to many of these.

MAZEL TOV! Felicitations on your she-palm, you won the lottery! You don't think you can just wait for the drupes to fall to the ground? Do you have some kind of bird or monkey down there that might steal them?

And a couple of last photos for today. The two Alfredii are peeking up over the mass of dead Tiger Grass leaves, but the Sabal Mauritiiformis looks pretty good! Encephalartos Ituriensis on the left is pretty bad...: I didn't get a good photo of the Copernicia Baileyana today, but it looks really good. The fans of the below Fallaensis peeking up in the middle are a bit burnt, but the other sheltered ones look fine. The Cycas Multipinnata is defoliated, and the crimson red Dioon Spinulosum on the right is impressive. A small Syagrus Schizophylla in the lower middle looks D-E-D, which is surprising. I thought Schizophylla was pretty hardy. The Furfuracea is crispy as expected, and even the lower left Dioon Merolae isn't happy:

Here's a view of the windy 22.6F and then 24.4F with light frost does to the backyard: The two Bottles on the right were already badly damaged from previous upper 20s frosts. The foxtails and fishtails on the right are almost completely brown. Oddly enough the Ptychosperma Schefferi just behind the Bottles looks discolored but maybe ok? I really thought that one was a wimp? The Alfredii looks much worse today than yesterday, and has turned a sickly olive. To the right of the Alfredii a Cryosophila Warscewiczii looks really good, but Cyphophoenix Nucele and Elaeis Guineensis "Whole Leaf" mutant are torched. On the left a Dioon Spinulosum and Dypsis/Chrysalidocarpus Lanceolata are torched. Elsewhere Lutescens and Pembana are equally burnt. Not quite visible is a badly burned Attalea Brejinhoensis, and of course on the far left a Sabal "Lisa" looks like nothing happened. Up front I had more tender species, since it's usually a few degrees warmer in the front yard: The 3 Kings on the right are likely dead, the Arenga Pinnata hard to say, and the giant Encephalartos Ituriensis is defoliated. Around the front a bunch of Encephalartos are also badly burned, with Ituriensis, Laurentianus and Gratus x Laurentianus at least partially defoliated. The "Jesse Durko" bamboo is rapidly becoming a mass of sticks: On the East side the Philodendron Selloum turned to stinky mush the first night. On the far left a Butia shrugged it off, but a pair of Kings are scarlet red. Just below the octagon window another Elaeis Guineensis is torched just as bad as the background fishtail and right foreground Arenga Pinnata. The box in the bottom foreground covered a Corypha Umbraculifera. With the box as protection the fans were burnt off but the petioles and new spear still look ok: Just to the left of the above photo a pair of 20+ foot Alfredii still look tattered but reasonably decent. The Encephalartos Kisambo shrugged it off:

I have been experimenting with high elevation Brugmansia species, B. vulcanicola and sanguinea. Apparently they need full sun, which is not available in my garden. The vucanicola does flower with morning direct sun but the shrub is quite stretched out and unsightly. I have several starts of sanguinea, currently overgrown in large plastic six-pack cells. They should be moved up to 1 gallons, but I don't care to invest the labor. come and get them !!