yea, i went from pulling out too much to NOT ENOUGH. but anything that dies below 15 degrees is something that i have already written off as a temporary planting.

some things i am curious about are my acacias. i have a small cultiformis that i wraped in single frost cloth. then at my other place i have a 10 foot pravissima. pretty sure the renters didn't protect that one! we'll see how these guys do. i grow them in spots where i don't need them, the pravissima was actually way out growing its location. should come back from the base, but i used to protect the base... the cultiformis is way more frost sensitive... but covered. who knows..

One of these knife-leaf types I had reaching above the roof in a sunny nook on Camano Island didn't come back from the base once there was a cold enough winter.

A winter with temperatures in the teens.

An interesting thing is that it attracted snails when in flower, but did not seem to get gnawed.

Haven't been able to get any gums to last on that site either; other common things like fatsi and heavenly bamboo have been problematic as well - much of the property has cold air draining through it from across the arterial; all of the property is up on top of the island.

i planted out my pravissima in early 2009, it made it through the 12 degree winter low that december. perhaps the older it gets the less likely it is to return from the base.

probably also wind dependent... and speaking of that, i am already seeing frost damage even though last nights low was 23. probably going to dig some more stuff out in a few minutes...

The NWS is predicting single digit lows for the Southern Willamette Valley this weekend. I'm not convinced that it'll get that low (especially in the urban heat islands), but I've moved all of my potted plants into the garage and have buckets covering some of my younger and more marginal plants. The 5" of snow that we received today will further help insulate the roots.

yea, wow, forecast is getting lower and lower. hitting 20 year type lows is possible.

The last time it was like this in December was during 1998. The Willamette Valley is colder the farther south you go, with record lows being subzero F. starting way up at the Portland international airport (-3F) and building up to -14F to -17F by the latitude of Springfield-Eugene - trees and shrubs that are able to endure around Puget Sound, due to the proximity of salt water kill out eventually down there, due to the bottom falling out when those sometimes markedly colder minimum temperatures come around. The rest of the time, on a week to week basis a consistent pattern is for it to be colder at night and colder more often in Portland than Seattle, but with afternoons also being warmer in Portland. So for people who are inside at night and out and about during the day, the Valley climate can seem better because it is hotter and sunnier - during the day.

This post was edited by bboy on Fri, Dec 6, 13 at 20:53

1998, i didn't really have much of a gardening brain going. i was in my early 20's in a rental.

but i do remember thinking "huh, i thought oregano was perennial here?" the following spring.

other than that it didn't even seem cold to me, having spent most of my life on the east coast.

Portland's proximity to the Gorge definitely gives it more of a maritime climate. Even as far north as Salem, you get a lot more highs in the 90s in the summer. From what I can tell, we also get a little more winter sun than Portland.

When you get south into the Umpqua and Rogue Valleys, it's definitely warmer and drier. It's too bad that there isn't a strong Portland- or Seattle-like economy down there, as the climate makes for a nice place to live.

Eight degrees here east of Renton this morning.
Seatac had 19 F. and Seattle registered 23 F.
Definitely colder here in the foothills at 750 ft. elevation than nearer the salt water. I don't try many marginally hardy Zone 8 plants for good reason.
Mike

Eight degrees here east of Renton this morning.
Seatac had 19 F. and Seattle registered 23 F.
Definitely colder here in the foothills at 750 ft. elevation than nearer the salt water. I don't try many marginally hardy Zone 8 plants for good reason.
Mike

Eight degrees here east of Renton this morning.
Seatac had 19 F. and Seattle registered 23 F.
Definitely colder here in the foothills at 750 ft. elevation than nearer the salt water. I don't try many marginally hardy Zone 8 plants for good reason.
Mike

22 last night here in North Portland. Not horrible. I guess tonight will be the test.

At this point the damage looks more like wind damage. Steady 10-20 mph winds from the east. I think the mixing is keeping the temps OK, but I am guessing some extra damage just from the wind. Lookin' at you olive tree. Probably going to dig that guy out today.

REGARDING SOUTHERN OREGON:

I would live there in a heartbeat if there were jobs and an international airport. But I suppose I would not be alone if that were true. Not only is the climate amazing, the scenery is unbeatable and the local flora is some of the most diverse on the planet.

What the heck! I kept getting msgs saying my post didn't go through and contact my server, so I resent it. Oh well.
Mike

The Eugene airport registered 6 degrees this morning. I'm not sure I believe that, though. Urban heat island affects aside, none of the weather stations in town registered below 14. My thermometer got down to 16.

Last time I looked the record low for Sea-Tac airport was 0F and for the Montlake (UW) weather station was 10F. And of course it was the Portland airport that produced the -3F reading. Maybe the jets produce a cold draft that brings the temperatures at international airports down.

And that's why they don't have an international airport in the Rogue Valley - they don't want the agricultural products to be adversely affected.

The Siskiyou-Klamath area is the Appalachia of the west coast, with rich biodiversity but not so much richness for people who want urban cultural amenities. If you want to live in a pine forest on a hillside just above miles and miles of parched looking grasslands there is Ashland with its Shakespeare festival and so on - I've been told there are actual serious gardeners there who buy and plant interesting kinds.

It being a basin the Rogue Valley has smog problems during the summer, due to forest mismanagement and resulting chronic fires. But the Pacifica Botanic Garden that forestfarm and others are developing will probably be quite something one day.

Brookings and vicinity long being a retirement mecca there might be enough medical facilities and restaurants etc. there to overcome the isolation - it certainly has the climate (18F-103F) and scenery, if you don't mind the coastal rains and winds. Wonderful public beach, city park full of native western azaleas, northernmost native redwood grove up the river, Siskiyou-Klamath mountain animals, geography and vegetation 1/2 hour out of town...

20 degrees this morning. I suppose we will be in the upper teens tonight. If nothing worse happens than that all winter I won't complain.

Don't forget the record low of -24F in McMinnville. It's the valleys on the east approaches to the coast ranges that get the coldest of the cold west of the Cascades.

15.1 F was lowest registered here overnight. 130 ft, 1/2 mile from sound....I'm getting grumpy.

bboy, I drove by your place a few weeks ago, wow...you're really making some changes!

Interesting it got that cold down there. Today I saw frozen looking pels in downtown planters - despite them being under building overhangs - and a 3' wide daisy bush all bent over.

Here the slope between the lawn and the entry area immediately in front of the house is going to be cleaned up and there will be new plantings extending from the street along the north side all away around the slope, to the driveway.

The back area, not visible from the street is being made into a sort of woodland garden - that is where all the new stuff was that got dug up and put into the garage.

The grass and now weedy beds right in front of the house are going to be replaced by bluestone paving ca. 2015, with except for the moso hedge and short sections of new planting east and west of the bamboo all planting in the front confined to the slope etc.

With the big lawn in front of the house and the woodland garden behind the place now reminds me of Caerhays - would that I had that climate, acreage and money to work with.

Now the National Weather Service page is showing my address only getting down to 23F tonight. I didn't have a flowering camellia start to go brown until ~2 days ago.

Oh, whole new round of plants coming inside and outside plants getting protection. Might get down to 1998 frost, might get down to 1989 frost...

OK, not the end of the world. Bottomed out at 14 for just a few hours. temperature climbing already.

I dug out a few more plants and put them in the garage last night. Not going to surprise anyone, but areas with the regular chip mulch, plus thick straw mulch had unfrozen ground. Nice to see that scheme working.

My thermometer in North Eugene read 8 degrees earlier this morning. Most of the other readings around town are between 1 and 10. (The weather station at the airport is oscillating all over the place, so the readings are probably not accurate.)

My potted Heteromeles arbutifolia doesn't appear to have any foliage damage. We'll see if the roots survive one more night in the teens.

I wouldn't have left that out, unless it was in a big planter that was not portable, might not freeze up.

Official low this morning in Eugene at the airport, -10F. WOW! It's not unusual for overnight temperatures to fluctuate like that during cold waves. Something similar happened in Olympia when they got to -1 in December 1998.

Here in Sequim it was 19 overnight - that ought to be the worst of it. I can't complain.

The -10 low at EUG is likely inaccurate. If you look at the NWS page, their thermometer was oscillating all over the place earlier this morning:

http://www.wrh.noaa.gov/mesowest/getobext.php?wfo=pqr&sid=KEUG&num=72&raw=0

It's really unlikely that the temperature went from -8 to -2 between 6:00 and 6:30 am, and then back down to -10 just 24 minutes later. That's not reflective of the actual air temperature. The -10 at EUG was also 11 degrees lower than the lowest temp that was reported elsewhere around town, further evidence that the airport thermometer is wacky.

Based on the other reports I've seen around town, the real low was likely somewhere between 1 and 8. It probably got below zero outside of town, but -10 is a real stretch.

This post was edited by OregonGrape on Sun, Dec 8, 13 at 15:38

Lowest recorded here last night was 16.5 F, and right now its 32.2 F....finally above freezing (woohoo!)...yesterday the high was only 30 F, so yes it looks like the worst is past us.

Re: thermometers oscillating all over the place, I had an interesting occurrence yesterday morning. I was watching in amazement as both of my thermo's refused to climb above 26 for several hours, then one of them began to soar, indicated...32...35...41. Finally I had to go check the sensor to see why. Both sensors are on the north side about 4' off the ground, 3' from each other and in total shade. Well, the one with the soaring reading was receiving a tiny patch of reflected sunlight from the neighbors south facing window. I've never noticed this before but it must happen on exactly two days per year on either side of the winter solstice and only if the sun is out. It topped out at 42 (while the other said 26) and a few minutes later was back down to 26 as well.

Thermometer hit a low of 13 F at my house last night in the west Portland suburbs.

I've got a lot of unhappy plants right now, even the ones under the cloche are sad looking. Two cabbages outside the cloche had fallen over, so I pulled them and the heads are hard as a rock. I harvested some kale from under the cloche this morning and they were all droopy and stiff, but tasted just fine. Only plants looking happy right now are the onions, garlic, and shallots. Went over to turn the compost pile and the top 4 inch was completely frozen. I wrapped the banana tree in burlap and plastic before the cold air hit...hopefully it's keeping it just warm enough for it not to die. The warmer air can't come soon enough!

16.4 last nite. so better off than 2009, but i'll wait till spring to see what happens.

Starting 4 Dec, lows of 23.9, 21.6, 24.8, 20.7, 14.2, and 15.1 today in SE Portland. Has remained below freezing since evening 5dec, a long stretch. The coldest since late 1990.

I expect feijoa and eucryphia to mostly defoliate and perhaps the loss of their finer twigs.

The cryptomeria should get a good bronzing, unlike last year.

Yeah,I'm glad I took bboy's advice and put my two potted Feijoa in the greenhouse with a small heater.The coldest in there was about 30F.
Larry,how did your fruit turn out?Were they all picked before the freeze?
I tried using the sent pollen.It looked like one took and grew a little,but the plant might be too young. Thanks,Brady

I think that this cold snap will wipe out a host of shrubs and perennials that are not hardy enough to this kind of cold. USDA designations of 7B/ 8 are not meant to this kind of cold. It has been like USDA 5 or 6 lately.
The nurseries will have a good business selling replacements next spring. That is good for the economy.

That's not how the USDA zones work, they aren't based on individual temperatures - they are based on average minimums over specific periods of years. That's why each is correlated to a range of temperatures, with the lowest temperatures for every year during the period used being the basis for the range. 0F-10F, 10F-20F etc. are not exclusive - there will be years when the low for that winter falls outside of the range associated with each zone, on sites mapped within them. As long as these temperatures outside of the average are not frequent enough to affect the average, nothing abnormal has occurred - your zone designation doesn't need to be changed just because there was a winter when it got below, say 10F or didn't get below 20F and so on.

Brady, my fruit was picked and put in the fridge some weeks ago--we had a string of frosts well before this recent chill. One full serving left for tomorrow.

Thanks for the pollen report. I will post the season harvest total in the feijoa thread when I get around to adding up the long column of weighings.

Last time we were above freezing, I put umbrella cloches over some things that are supposed to be hardy to 5F. The only thing I was really worried about was my teeny, tiny 'Rebecca' Daphne. It just went in a few weeks ago. It looks okay so far. I noticed that the inner surface of the cloches were heavily frosted. Ice stays a constant 32F. I wonder if I got an igloo effect. The coprosmas on the porch came inside for several days.

I'm supposedly in zone 8 here in Seattle, but since 2008 we've had some really cold temperatures (last year being the exception). I won't plant anything in the ground that isn't rated to zone 7.

i see we are part of the same facebook group...

Which group? I belong to quite a few at this point.

garden professors group.

there are some great gardening groups on facebook, you can see why traffic around here is WAY down. i totally had that "ice can only be 32 degrees" fact in my head too. don't know where that was spread around. i think someone told me that when i was a kid. but its one of those things that gets around despite not making much sense.

Ice-WATER mixture cannot be colder than 32 degrees. Perhaps that's what you're remembering.

Planting one USA Zone lower than what one is supposedly in is a good idea. As explained above, the zones do not reflect rare "outlier" lows. I try to restrict my Zone 8 plants to perennials or subshrubs that can be easily covered, or I plant them in containers and move them into the garage during cold spells.

Haller Lake may also be a frost pocket.

I am most definitely in a frost pocket! I have a small greenhouse. That's where I keep my pots with dahlias, fuchsias, and Rhodies that don't want to be below 25F

It also seems kind of like a desert:

Precip for Boeing, Everett
Date
11/19 .11, .4
11/20 0, 0
11/21 0, 0
11/22 0, 0
11/23 .08, 0
11/24 0, 0
11/25 0, 0
11/26 0, 0
11/27 0, 0
11/28 0, 0
11/29 .01, 0
11/30 .06, .04
12/1 .03, .41
12/2 .11, .13
12/3 .01, 0
12/4 0, 0
12/5 0, 0
12/6 0, 0
12/7 0, 0
12/8 0, 0
12/9 0 0
12/10 0, 0
12/11 0, 0
12/12 0 so far in Edmonds

No, no, really: it rains here all the time - just look out the window!

So according to the National Weather Service it is currently 41F at Haller Lake (and 39F in Edmonds, in a part of town near the water). What I would expect is that there might be cold air sitting over the lake and shoreline during an arctic period, but that properties any distance above the level of the depression the lake sits in would not be much different from surrounding areas.

Some ponds and small lakes in this area that are roundish in shape and sit in holes are the result of blocks of ice that broke off of the retreating Vashon glaciation and melted into the ground.

This post was edited by bboy on Thu, Dec 12, 13 at 17:44

Good thing for those of us who mulched well! I went and checked on a plot of several plants I had put in two weeks prior to what they are referring to as "The Arctic Invasion" (lol!!!). Not a single one is damaged, nor did any of the soil freeze around them, unlike my turf or bare bed spots. Point being is that those who mulched are quite likely to be fine. Those who didn't... well... I'll have some charity plants for your in spring :)

The land on the west side of Haller Lake slopes down and then back up to Phinney Ridge. My back fence is at the lowest point. My backyard has frost when nobody else has frost.

Portland is stuck on 26 inches of precip year-to-date, a very similar total to Bismarck ND that is having a wet year.

Still chilly, 24.4 this morning.

Cold around here is below 10F, that's when you find out what really is hardy and what isn't. If a neighborhood effectively stays above 10F, even in a winter when most of the area dips below that temperature, then it is part of the banana belt. Usually this is properties within walking distance of salt water.

PS: its too early to tell for sure, but the red cestrum isn't looking half bad. couple snapped branches. some blacked out leaves, but other areas looking nice and green.

if its OK with getting hacked down to a foot every winter, it could have some long term survival.

i'll see how it progresses, haven't really put the species to test. i could see it going the way of acacias (look OK after a hard cold spell, but slowly and surely die back).

Just chiming in here.... in Vancouver WA and Battliground WA we got down to 8 or 9 for 2nights. I worried about the fig trees and young feeg saplings I grew from cuttings, and some others, but it is what it is! Wonder what the rest of winter will do!

The potted Toyon that I unintelligently left out on Saturday evening (low of 7 F the following morning) took some significant foliage damage, but I think that it'll pull through. Many of the leaves that were buried in snow still look good. Tough plant.

My Salvia spathacea also took foliage damage, but the plants had 6" of snow to insulate the roots, so I foresee them "springing" back into action in April. An individual that I planted in early November was small enough to be completely encased in snow and took no visible damage.