RE: Let's All Pretend This Is Not Happening
Things are definitely changing, and not all for the good. Here in new England we often have a range of growth like you are experiencing. But that is normal for this area.
What isn't normal is the 90's in April having just had 28F days before, as I mentioned in my The Week That Was post.
Fifteen or twenty years ago we almost NEVER saw deer ticks. Dog ticks, yes, but not deer ticks. In the following years we have them from March onward, some years seeing lots every day. There were some around (I was re-infected with Lyme disease in 1999) but we never found them on us or the animals.
Because of the unseasonable warm, people are tempted to plant their gardens early. Not me, I put too much effort and $$ to have the seedlings frozen. My last frost was May 31 twenty years ago, and I know we've had 1 hard frost on that day since then. So I am erring on the side of caution and planting as I always have.
I know in 1976 my husband and I left for a hitchhiking trip around the U.S. on May 19th. We headed north and had not left the state when we were in a blizzard, in flipflops and cutoffs. That's how the trip started. Fortunately, it went much better for the rest of it.
Yeah, I'm waiting to plant most of my stuff. I've got butternut seeds in, but they overwinter well. Yesterday, we had a sunny 81° F, in Central New Jersey, then it plummeted down into the 30s really fast and got windy. We were out shopping in shorts and t-shirts. When we got home we were freezing. All the daffodils were lying almost down to the ground from the sudden onslaught of cold wind. Today it's really cold and super windy. I remember when we had a snowstorm in NJ in around 1969 on Easter. My 3 or 4 yr old daughter was dressed up in a pretty, gauzy, spring green dress with daisies on it and she was wearing a straw hat and purse. We were getting ready to go to church when it suddenly started snowing like crazy. It was in April. So, in this part of the world, I guess it isn't so unusual to have late snow storms but it does seem to me that the weather is very different on the whole. Unpredictable, cold, windy, very hot, like it doesn't know what to do. I'm sitting it out. I'm smiling at you in flip-flops and cutoffs in a blizzard. Crazy funny!
LMAO! I surely am familiar with the crazy weather of the NE. What I have noticed though, is the consistency of this craziness. Normally there are freak weather happenings, this though, is continuous throughout the entire season.
The weather craziness, has been increasing for years now. The fruit tree growers have lost their crops for 2 years in a row now due to the cold weather. This is not normal, these growers have been growing peaches, pears, grapes and apples for years these past two spring seasons have devastated these farmer's incomes.
I hope this is just a freak thing, but every year I have been here the trees are green by mid April. right now the trees are just budding. This is due to the incredible amount of cold we have had. You can go to http://w2.weather.gov/climate/index.php?wfo=lzk, and check out the normal temps for this month or any other. While there may be a freeze, here and there over the years, what we are going through right now is far beyond normal. As far back as I can look on recorded weather here in NCAR there has been no snow in April.
This was 2 years ago 3 days from now. I was late planting and still my radishes, in the upper left, were close to ready. My kale was a week or two away from first harvest and the garden was doing exactly what I expected. This is no longer the case. Now my plants come up and it freezes, I cover when I have warning and they still die. The freezes are not quick, they last for days and at times weeks. Just weird!
Yes, it's really hard when you have an established time you plant and freezes appear. Like if we were to have some in July here.
We have had a couple years where it was 80's & 90's in April, and the buds started, then we got a hard frost in early May. These were a couple years apart. It's the 80's & 90's in April that's way off for this area. Not much you can do about the trees....
Seems our April is set to be colder than our January freezing here still...