more about frost
I’ve been asked for more numbers about frost in our area… so he is the big picture overview
The dates of the first light frost (-1 C) over the last 11 years:
2002 Oct 21
2003 Oct 23
2004 Oct 11
2005 Oct 20
2006 no data
2007 Oct 12
2008 Oct 06
2009 Sep 19
2010 Oct 10
2011 Sep 17
2012 Oct 08
2013 Sep 16
The dates of the last light frost (-1 C) over the last 11 years:
2003 Apr 30
2004 May 08
2005 May 17
2006 no data
2007 May 18
2008 May 05
2009 May 13
2010 Jun 13
2011 Apr 22
2012 Apr 30
2013 May 14
The number of growing days between light frosts:
2003 176
2004 156
2005 156
2006 no data
2007 147
2008 154
2009 129
2010 119
2011 149
2012 162
2013 125
Year #days (#weeks)
min 119 (17)
average 147 (21)
max 176 (25)
stddev 17 (2)
Notes on the light frost Monday night Sept 16th. It was a long period of below zero temperatures, starting around midnight and runing until sunrise around 7am. All of the tomato plants were killed off. Had it bee na shorter period of time (say maybe an hour), they might have survived.. or at least some of them.
Heavy frost we define as -3C and it does kill off most everything else that is not frost tolerant.