Florida Winter 2021-2022

[Estlander]

3 hours ago, sonoranfans said:

It may also be worth considering that absolute lows on your yard sensor that may be due to a temporary breeze (and then rise right after) are not as important as perhaps 10-20 min average temps.

I think you’re right. My sensors have a very high refresh rate and are super sensitive. They react to temporary breezes and also when you pick them up and touch them pretty much anywhere. They also react to your breath if you’re near them. 
Makes it hard to know what your more consistent low was. So, as a result , I’ve been struggling with the decision as to where the best place to put them is.
Maybe somewhere that has some wind block might work better than free-hanging in an open yard - but then you do get a slightly  higher reading. But, then again, maybe that’s the correct reading.

I guess one solution is to get a more complex system that tracks temperature changes. 

Edited January 31, 2022 by Estlander

[bubba]

Many interesting observations! Kinsey on the inverted freeze is interesting and seems applicable in some degree to this event. The arctic incursion seems to have invaded the state primarily on the east side during the evening of January 30, 2022. On January 31, 2022, the western part of the state was effected similar to the east coast the night before. 
 

RedRabbit where is the 110 foot above sea level in Pinellas? I have played a golf course in Clearwater where I was amazed at the elevation changes compared to south Florida, although climbing the Jupiter mountain in Jonathan Dickinson can be rather interesting! I wonder if that is the Albert Whitehead airport, which seems to enjoy an incredible microclimate.I note that Coquina Key recorded a low of 40.3°F and 39.4°F respectively.

Ray’s Comments are very interesting regarding the airports. One strange thing that I have noticed with PBIA that is out of the ordinary is that the complete lack of vegetation seems to make it colder than the surrounding areas. It is like a wind swept,open ended Prairie!

JJPalmer’s comments regarding the accuracy of some of the weather stations seems point on. It is hard to reconcile reporting stations like Bradenton Beach, when Longboat Key reports 39.2F and 39.4F on the respective nights and is further south. Useppa is just a spit of land (43.3 F/49.5F) with surrounding water temperature of 62°F but Bokeelia on the water at Pine Island recorded 42.8F and 39.6F on respective nights virtually adjacent. Not Certain how we can triangulate AMI to be the warmest place in the state but this was a strange arctic incursion! More to come!

[RedRabbit]

20 minutes ago, bubba said:

RedRabbit where is the 110 foot above sea level in Pinellas? I have played a golf course in Clearwater where I was amazed at the elevation changes compared to south Florida, although climbing the Jupiter mountain in Jonathan Dickinson can be rather interesting! I wonder if that is the Albert Whitehead airport, which seems to enjoy an incredible microclimate.I note that Coquina Key recorded a low of 40.3°F and 39.4°F respectively.

JJPalmer’s comments regarding the accuracy of some of the weather stations seems point on. It is hard to reconcile reporting stations like Bradenton Beach, when Longboat Key reports 39.2F and 39.4F on the respective nights and is further south. Useppa is just a spit of land (43.3 F/49.5F) with surrounding water temperature of 62°F but Bokeelia on the water at Pine Island recorded 42.8F and 39.6F on respective nights virtually adjacent. Not Certain how we can triangulate AMI to be the warmest place in the state but this was a strange arctic incursion! More to come!

Pinellas’ highest point is around SR 580 and Countryside. It doesn’t feel very high there. You can actually get a nice view in a few other places though, like Alderman and 19. Phillips Park gets to around 80’ right on Tampa Bay but some portion of it was built up by Native Americans.

The Coquina Key observation had to have been due to an east wind. Like you said, it was colder this morning. 

Regarding AMI, the temperature gets colder as you go further south. The further south you go in Manatee/Sarasota the closer the barrier islands get to the mainland so more cold air is able to get to the beach. This is most noticeable from Siesta through Manasota. The Bradenton Beach sensor has always read warmer than Longboat and a little warmer than AMI so I think the sensor is off, but not by much. If Bradenton Beach had 47 then AMI was probably 45-46f based on the relationship there used be with the old AMI stations.

Edited January 31, 2022 by RedRabbit

[ruskinPalms]

No damage evident in my yard from last night. Lots of torched zone 10 palms all along US 301 from northern manatee county into southern hillsborough county in the rural areas. They will likely recover but they look rough and like they definitely saw upper 20s a couple of nights in a row. 

[NickJames]

Interestingly, p. Robellinis show no ill-effects from the freezes. 

[Alan_Tampa]

Second night results, nothing noticeable other than my passion vine frost cloth had frost on it at 0400. Vine looks unhappy.  Exposed areas look perfect,. What a conundrum,.

[kinzyjr]

2 hours ago, bubba said:

Many interesting observations! Kinsey on the inverted freeze is interesting and seems applicable in some degree to this event. The arctic incursion seems to have invaded the state primarily on the east side during the evening of January 30, 2022. On January 31, 2022, the western part of the state was effected similar to the east coast the night before. 

The inverted freeze mentioned in the book was the January 1997 freeze.  I couldn't remember the month and year off-hand last night, so I cracked open A History of Florida Citrus Freezes to find the month and year.  Here is a link from the UF/IFAS for anyone interested: https://blogs.ifas.ufl.edu/ifascomm/2013/11/21/the-big-freeze-of-97-and-the-birth-of-fawn/

On 12/16/2021 at 10:39 AM, Alan_Tampa said:

guys, the first rule of winter is don't talk about winter. 

until after winter

This should be a new forum rule.  Now if everyone could raise their right hand for the swearing-in process...

[Merlyn]

Here's a chart of my 5 sensors from all weekend.  You can see the burgundy line (front NW side) tracks well above the other front yard sensor.  It was installed with a screw into a 70' tall oak tree with the sensor basically touching the trunk.  Around 11pm last night I put a 1' long gutter screw into the trunk and hung the sensor at the end.  The temp immediately dropped 4-5 degrees and tracks reasonably close to the free air sensor on the other side of the front yard (green line).  So positioning sensors definitely matters!

I got lucky (if you can call it that) on Sunday night, because the temperatures were quickly dropping until about 2AM.  It could have easily been another 28-29F night, but it bottomed out at almost exactly freezing and then stayed in the 34-36 range the rest of the night.  There's a LOT of brown out there, mostly from the Saturday night freeze.  It wasn't apparent in the morning, but by Sunday afternoon there were a ton of burnt fronds.  Even normally hardy ones like Arenga Micrantha were badly bronzed!

Does anyone know temperatures at Leu Gardens?  I'd be interested to see how this compares to the 2009 freeze.

[ruskinPalms]

Well. So far for the season I’m calling my lowest low 31F. We will see how February goes 

[Aceraceae]

2 hours ago, NickJames said:

Interestingly, p. Robellinis show no ill-effects from the freezes. 

They are almost a hardy 9b palm though wimpier than most Phoenix and needing higher humidity. 

 

Re: Havana 39 or so

Cuba ended up much colder than the lower Keys this time, but with higher humidity. Basically saturated at 40 instead of 50 and dry. 

[ruskinPalms]

1 hour ago, Aceraceae said:

They are almost a hardy 9b palm though wimpier than most Phoenix and needing higher humidity. 

 

Re: Havana 39 or so

Cuba ended up much colder than the lower Keys this time, but with higher humidity. Basically saturated at 40 instead of 50 and dry. 

So. I’m pretty sure Cuba (and some of its palms) do indeed see frozen dew/frost from time to time. Cuba’s palms really are a good fit to try in Florida overall.  

[ruskinPalms]

I am thinking US 301 is the new boundary for the really cold stuff in manatee and hillsborough county anyway. Lots and lots of subdivisions have popped up along 301 over the past 5 years or so. Still very rural from northern manatee to southern hillsborough along that stretch though and the empirical evidence shows it was cold there.

[JJPalmer]

If anyone has the time or inclination, I’d be curious to know how the Sunrise Landscape’s trunking coconut did this event. Located off I-4.

https://www.google.com/maps/place/I-4,+Tampa,+FL+33610/@27.9980304,-82.3413155,17z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x88c2c92bde181eb9:0xb8077f96f474917a?hl=en-us (on mobile, sorry if the link doesn’t work)

Edited February 1, 2022 by JJPalmer

[ChristianStAug]

For what it's worth 

Latest monthly outlook issued today.

 

[pj_orlando_z9b]

Just now, ChristianStAug said:

For what it's worth 

Latest monthly outlook issued today.

 

Great, so expect well below normal 

[RedRabbit]

Results for my locations:

- Westchase: 30.2f (light frost, 35f on night 2 with moderate frost)

- Kenwood (St. Pete): 30.4f

- Laurel: 33-36f judging by stations on nearby Venice Island.

Here in Westchase, palms and other plants have varying degrees of damage but overall it’s minimal. I saw some fully exposed adonidia and Ptychosperma elegans that took no damage. Papayas, bananas, and elephant ears are all fried. Mangoes and d lutescens have a little burn at the top, maybe from frost. 
A couple of winners for me were my Lytocaryum hoehnei and Hong Kong orchid, both with zero damage. I can’t recommend Hong Kong orchids enough, they’re great trees for Florida. 
A couple losers for me were my A myolensis with about 80% burn under partial canopy. My Beccariophoenix alfredii is actually looking a little bronzed too despite being well protected. 

I was disappointed with how cold it got in NW Hillsborough despite this not being a bad freeze… I may need to get in touch with my realtor later this year because I have my eye on a few places warmer. 

 

Edited February 1, 2022 by RedRabbit

[pj_orlando_z9b]

5 minutes ago, RedRabbit said:

Results for my locations:

- Westchase: 30.2f (light frost, 35f on night 2 with moderate frost)

- Kenwood (St. Pete): 30.4f

- Laurel: 33-36f judging by stations on nearby Venice Island.

Here in Westchase, palms and other plants have varying degrees of damage but overall it’s minimal. I saw some fully exposed adonidia and Ptychosperma elegans that took no damage. Papayas, bananas, and elephant ears are all fried. Mangoes and d lutescens have a little burn at the top, maybe from frost. 
A couple of winners for me were my Lytocaryum hoehnei and Hong Kong orchid, both with zero damage. I can’t recommend Hong Kong orchids enough, they’re great trees for Florida. 
A couple losers for me were my A myolensis with about 80% burn under partial canopy. My Beccariophoenix alfredii is actually looking a little bronzed too despite being well protected. 

I was disappointed with how cold it got in NW Hillsborough despite this not being a bad freeze… I may need to get in touch with my realtor later this year because I have my eye on a few places warmer. 

 

Alfreddi? Mine has a little bronze on lower fronds but could be a typical potassium deficiency in winter.

[RedRabbit]

5 minutes ago, pj_orlando_z9b said:

Alfreddi? Mine has a little bronze on lower fronds but could be a typical potassium deficiency in winter.

Yeah, that might be all it is. It doesn’t look quite like cold damage:

 

[Palmaceae]

That is definitely typical cold damage on a coconut.

[NickJames]

The royals off I-4 in Sanford don’t appear to be damaged. There is widespread damage to other exposed tropicals in the area. Perhaps their height helps as they are exposed to more mixing. 

[Silas_Sancona]

1 hour ago, ChristianStAug said:

For what it's worth 

Latest monthly outlook issued today.

 

That forecast = 

[ChristianStAug]

31 minutes ago, NickJames said:

The royals off I-4 in Sanford don’t appear to be damaged. There is widespread damage to other exposed tropicals in the area. Perhaps their height helps as they are exposed to more mixing. 

Once royals gain big height they really seem to handle cold well. I think the key to getting them going strong at their northern limit in Florida is planting them as FG trees from South Florida like these I4 ones must have been planted. Not even huge huge FG size but like a 45 gallon size. Mine went from 26 inches gray wood as FG to 5.5 foot gray wood in a single season putting its leaves already starting over 12 feet above the ground. Roots spread like mad during its first summer as well. 

[SubTropicRay]

22 hours ago, RedRabbit said:

The area has gotten warmer, but I really don’t think it’s as warm as TPA suggests. It would need to be very urban, like downtown Tampa or downtown St. Pete to maybe get that kind of boost. 

Regarding South Tampa, the weather stations have been very mixed and usually not as warm as TPA. Along Kennedy seems to benefit from urban heat, but not so much south of there. Within a block of the water is warm, but I’ve been seeing some cold readings in interior of the interbay penninsula. To the best of my knowledge there’s not much interesting growing between Manhattan and roughly MacDill either. I know there’s some good spots but it seems hit or miss so I wouldn’t move back there expecting a solid climate (though I'm sure it’s a little better than frigid Westchase ).

I never said the area got the same boost as the airport.  I said it lies somewhere in between MacDill's and TPA.  My morning temps almost always reflect Peter O'Knight's lows and not TPA.   TPF has been 2-3 degrees cooler than TPA this go round and 3-4 degrees warmer than MacDill.  MCF is NOT representative of the Interbay Peninsula.  WU sucks too.  I look at Weather Undergrounds lows in my area and laugh.  The big discrepancy between readings so close together should make anyone question the validity of the data.  Those values rarely reflect what my 2 outdoor thermometers read.  Like JJPalmer mentioned, I suspect there are more than a few cheap, home weather stations placed in bad locations all over the map  Take most of that data with a grain of salt.   

Not sure what you mean by a solid climate though.  Dr. Young's place was pretty good proof I'd say.  Lots of that stuff would not have survived anywhere else in Tampa.  There would be also more interesting stuff leftover if the new building surge didn't involve clearing the lot first.  When I moved into my home, there were a dozen or so Gumbo Limbo throughout the area.  There's one left.  Now, there are too many folks consumed with having nice lawns and their "mandatory" crape myrtle .  Interesting stuff doesn't exist because it doesn't get planted.  I've lived there for 25 years and witnessed lots of not so bad freezes that turn pretty unsightly once north and east of I-275.  In 2010, the airport temps weren't impressive.  I was repeatedly 1-2 degrees warmer than the airport during that 11 day stretch.  I guess it's all perspective.  It's solid enough for me and as good as it gets in this county.          

[Jimbean]

[JJPalmer]

Should we start a ‘Florida Freeze Damage Thread: Jan ‘22’ thread?

[SubTropicRay]

17 hours ago, bubba said:

 

Ray’s Comments are very interesting regarding the airports. One strange thing that I have noticed with PBIA that is out of the ordinary is that the complete lack of vegetation seems to make it colder than the surrounding areas. It is like a wind swept,open ended Prairie!

 

I agree.  It is counter intuitive.  I guess the feels like temperature might be worse at the airport 

[Rapha2343]

11 hours ago, ChristianStAug said:

For what it's worth 

Latest monthly outlook issued today.

 

Never trust this. They were really wrong last time.

[Rapha2343]

 

The picture on the RIGHT is the ECMWF forecast from very early January (just after New Year) for the entire month.  Thats why this is not trustable specially in the Winter. However, the LEFT one got it right... Idk how...

Edited February 1, 2022 by Rapha2343

[JJPalmer]

2 minutes ago, Rapha2343 said:

 

The picture in the RIGHT is the ECMWF forecast from very early January (just after New Year) for the entire month.  Thats why this is not trustable specially in the Winter. However, the LEFT one got it right... Idk how...

The one on the left is the observed temperature anomalies, not a forecast.

[Rapha2343]

2 minutes ago, JJPalmer said:

The one on the left is the observed temperature anomalies, not a forecast.

Oooh got it. I was really confused hahahahah. Thx for clarifying

[pj_orlando_z9b]

Hit 70 at my house. First time since Jan 22. 

[RedRabbit]

5 hours ago, SubTropicRay said:

I never said the area got the same boost as the airport.  I said it lies somewhere in between MacDill's and TPA.  My morning temps almost always reflect Peter O'Knight's lows and not TPA.   TPF has been 2-3 degrees cooler than TPA this go round and 3-4 degrees warmer than MacDill.  MCF is NOT representative of the Interbay Peninsula.  WU sucks too.  I look at Weather Undergrounds lows in my area and laugh.  The big discrepancy between readings so close together should make anyone question the validity of the data.  Those values rarely reflect what my 2 outdoor thermometers read.  Like JJPalmer mentioned, I suspect there are more than a few cheap, home weather stations placed in bad locations all over the map  Take most of that data with a grain of salt.   

Not sure what you mean by a solid climate though.  Dr. Young's place was pretty good proof I'd say.  Lots of that stuff would not have survived anywhere else in Tampa.  There would be also more interesting stuff leftover if the new building surge didn't involve clearing the lot first.  When I moved into my home, there were a dozen or so Gumbo Limbo throughout the area.  There's one left.  Now, there are too many folks consumed with having nice lawns and their "mandatory" crape myrtle .  Interesting stuff doesn't exist because it doesn't get planted.  I've lived there for 25 years and witnessed lots of not so bad freezes that turn pretty unsightly once north and east of I-275.  In 2010, the airport temps weren't impressive.  I was repeatedly 1-2 degrees warmer than the airport during that 11 day stretch.  I guess it's all perspective.  It's solid enough for me and as good as it gets in this county.          

Thanks for sharing your perspective Ray! Tampa has some good neighborhoods no doubt.
Regarding the rest of the county, I’ve continually been impressed by Apollo Beach and Ruskin west of 41. I’m not sure if Davis Island or Ruskin is warmer, but I’d prefer living in S Tampa personally.

13 hours ago, Palmaceae said:

That is definitely typical cold damage on a coconut.

30f shouldn’t have burned an alfie, especially a protected one, but maybe it did. 

 

A myolensis looking terrible:

Looking up from the palm I thought the bottlebrush tree gave it enough canopy, but perhaps it doesn’t. 

[Walt]

Last night the low temperature predicted for Lake Placid was 42 degrees. I told my wife that that means we will be dropping into the 30s again.  Well, the low for Lake Placid Elementary School's STEM weather station was 47.5 degrees. My low was 36.5 degrees! (Yesterday morning was 27 degrees.) But what really boggles my mind is that I was colder (again) than Archbold Biological Station by almost 9 degrees!

I'd like to think my thermometer was wrong, not calibrated properly, in a place that caused a false reading, etc.. But that's not the case because I have four digital thermometers in four different spots and they are all in agreement.

As any reader of my posts knows, I drove up into town yesterday morning (up on the Lake Wales Ridge), and proved empirically how cold my property and neighborhood readings were compared to higher ground (ridge).  Below are some pics I took this morning juxtaposing my La Crosse thermometer base station with my laptop screen showing the current temperature at Lake Placid Elementary School. The readings speak for themselves (note the time on my La Crosse and website on my computer screen). Lake Placid Elementary and Archbold Biological Station were already warming up, while at my place the temperature was hardly moving.  And I walked outside with my hand held Taylor digital thermometer that measures in tenths of a degree, and it confirmed my La Crosse readings. For 24 years (since I moved here) I thought Archbold Biological Station was about the coldest spot in Highlands County. I no longer believe that, as ever cold day I've had this past January and today my property has run colder. Further, I just can't wrap my head around how at 7:40 a.m. I was almost 16 degrees colder than up in town!

[kinzyjr]

14 hours ago, JJPalmer said:

Should we start a ‘Florida Freeze Damage Thread: Jan ‘22’ thread?

I started one in the Freeze Damage Data forum for anyone interested in contributing:

https://www.palmtalk.org/forum/index.php?/topic/72092-january-2022-florida-freeze-report/

[Bill H2DB]

 

That is about as stratified as it can be .

 I would like to " see " a profile of the Temps from your level , straight up . 

That verifies the old time method of having Wind machines in the groves etc .   Must help some .

 Helicopters are used in some of the flat fields to do the same thing nowadays .  

  When I was growing up , one of the old time TV weather men ( Charley Stump Ch2 Daytona / Orlando ) , would always use the term " Pockets , and Mucklands "  to describe the temp. diffs. in these cases .

   If I ever move back to the Highlands area , it will surely be to somewhere on the Ridge . My old place out west of Sebring / Avon Park sat about 60'- 70' below the Ridge , and you could feel the Temp. drop dramatically as we went from US 27 west on SR 64 to where we turned to go south .

   You do have the benefit of generally warmer Winter days at this time of the year  , than here in coastal Volusia . 

Inland , the largely unknown Fern Industry , has large shade cloth enclosures that provide shade for the plants , but also are used to control the Temps . during a Freeze , by continually spraying the enclosures , and the Latent Heat of Freezing keeps the Temp. at 32 , as long as the pumps keep working .  It uses a lot of water of course , and it usually leads to a Sinkhole or so developing a bit later , as the ground water level evacuates Limestone cavities .  It's a different version of the technique used by Plant City strawberry growers do .

[ChristianStAug]

On 1/31/2022 at 11:13 PM, NickJames said:

The royals off I-4 in Sanford don’t appear to be damaged. There is widespread damage to other exposed tropicals in the area. Perhaps their height helps as they are exposed to more mixing. 

Once royals gain big height they really seem to handle cold well. I think the key to getting them going strong at their northern limit in Florida is planting them as FG trees from South Florida like these I4 ones must have been planted. Not even huge huge FG size but like a 45 gallon size. Mine went from 26 inches gray wood as FG to 5.5 foot gray wood in a single season putting its leaves already starting over 12 feet above the ground. Roots spread like mad during its first summer as well. 

[Walt]

4 hours ago, Bill H2DB said:

 

That is about as stratified as it can be .

 I would like to " see " a profile of the Temps from your level , straight up . 

That verifies the old time method of having Wind machines in the groves etc .   Must help some .

 Helicopters are used in some of the flat fields to do the same thing nowadays .  

  When I was growing up , one of the old time TV weather men ( Charley Stump Ch2 Daytona / Orlando ) , would always use the term " Pockets , and Mucklands "  to describe the temp. diffs. in these cases .

   If I ever move back to the Highlands area , it will surely be to somewhere on the Ridge . My old place out west of Sebring / Avon Park sat about 60'- 70' below the Ridge , and you could feel the Temp. drop dramatically as we went from US 27 west on SR 64 to where we turned to go south .

   You do have the benefit of generally warmer Winter days at this time of the year  , than here in coastal Volusia . 

Inland , the largely unknown Fern Industry , has large shade cloth enclosures that provide shade for the plants , but also are used to control the Temps . during a Freeze , by continually spraying the enclosures , and the Latent Heat of Freezing keeps the Temp. at 32 , as long as the pumps keep working .  It uses a lot of water of course , and it usually leads to a Sinkhole or so developing a bit later , as the ground water level evacuates Limestone cavities .  It's a different version of the technique used by Plant City strawberry growers do .

You lived out here, so you know the value of elevation, whereas many who live on the coasts do not experience this and/or not aware of it.  I don't know what the atmospheric conditions were exactly yesterday, but I've never observed that much spread in temperature between my place and up in town. Generally, on the coldest nights of winter, when it's almost invariably a radiational cooling night, there is about a 7-9 degree spread between my low ground area and up in town.  But yesterday I got a 12 degree spread in low temperature, then after the sun started coming up, the temperature up in town started to rise faster than at my place to where the spread was almost 16 degree difference.

 

[ChristianStAug]

*eye roll* “La Nina” ehhh? 

[Palmaceae]

On 2/1/2022 at 12:58 PM, RedRabbit said:

Thanks for sharing your perspective Ray! Tampa has some good neighborhoods no doubt.
Regarding the rest of the county, I’ve continually been impressed by Apollo Beach and Ruskin west of 41. I’m not sure if Davis Island or Ruskin is warmer, but I’d prefer living in S Tampa personally.

30f shouldn’t have burned an alfie, especially a protected one, but maybe it did. 

 

A myolensis looking terrible:

Looking up from the palm I thought the bottlebrush tree gave it enough canopy, but perhaps it doesn’t. 

Frost will damage a Beccariophoenix and that is what it looks like. I would assume there was frost on the palm when the sun hit it and damaged it.

[JLM]

6 hours ago, ChristianStAug said:

*eye roll* “La Nina” ehhh? 

The GFS has predicted a freeze like this (or worse) countless times, none of them verified or have come close to verifying so far. This is within the fantasy range, so pattern recognition would be a good thing to do at this stage.