Many of my tomato plants are damaged, but not dead. The cold isn't what worries me, since they are covered. It's the combination of cold and wet. Tonight should be much drier so I'm guessing I'll tell you how it went tomorrow. The lettuce isn't covered but is up against the house so I don't worry about it too much. It looks wind whipped but, if it warms up on Thursday, it should perk right back up. I'm surprised that my potatoes didn't get hammered as badly as I thought. They are up against the house too so I guess they might be somewhat protected.

Norman was inside the warm line. No tree or garden damage here at the homestead. Asparagus covered with 5 gallon buckets. Raised bed with brocs & cabbage has a frost blanket that is snuggly tucked in. Now out at the FAA...is bad damage. All the trees were ice covered. It's just WRONG to step on green, crunchy leaves that have fallen!

Our redbuds haven't fully bloomed yet...the ones at the FAA are covered in ice...blooms & all. Sad.

Near Grove, we had rain but no hail, and no ice since our temps didn't drop that low last night. Depending on which forecast you believe, we will be between 31 and 34 tonight and tomorrow night. We got over an inch of rain, but it is over now. I have no warm season plants in the ground and have covered the cool season ones as much as possible.

My redbud trees are in bloom, but it doesn't matter. They are under power lines and have been chopped up so badly that they are ugly now and are being taken down this year.

I don't plan to plant anything else for now, and will evaluate again this time next week.

Being so far south, the cool-down and the wind and rain didn't arrive here until the early morning hours today.

We got 0.75" of rain but no ice, sleet, snow, hail or anything else and no real wind damage ....just noisy wind gusts that kept waking me up.

My garden is soaking wet and muddy, and we have a Freeze Warning for tonight but I'm not real worried about it. The warm season plants are nice and warm and happy because they aren't in the ground yet and the cool season ones are covered with row cover so the cold won't knock the blossoms off the peas or damage the potatoes. The onions are looking particularly happy---they are loving all the rain.

The waiting game goes on....waiting to see what the weather will do before I decide when to start planting warm season crops. The waiting game is getting old.

I had a little hummingbird hanging out on the sunporch today, and who can blame it....it was warm on the sun porch and not windy and I had flats of warm season annuals out there. By late afternoon the hummers were flitting around outside in the sunlight and I hope they find a warm place to shelter tonight.

We got about 1.75 inches here in Newalla. We haven't planted anything except for some bush bean seeds yet, but we do have a peach tree full of blooms that I hope survives tonight's freeze.
I'm sorry to hear about all the damaged limbs at your place, Sharon.

Krista

I should have mentioned that we just got rain without any sleet or ice

Sharon, I got just under 2 inches. I can't imagine we had a 1/2 inch difference between us :) , but I suppose it is possible. I am finally seeing puddles in yards and mine is a little squishy. Guess it took 4 inches of rain between the last two systems to get there!

My neighbor had both of her trees pretty severely pruned yesterday, and I did last year, so our yards are pretty clear, but a lot of the elms and bradford pears in The Village look like they have taken some damage.

I'm worried about the temps tonight. I think it will get colder.

Piedmont got a lot of sleet. Most bradfords, redbuds, and evergreens in my area were nearly doubled over with ice much of the day (side note- a loblolly looks really goofy when it's hunched over). I went out this morning to hose down my beautifully leafed-out apricot this morning because it was so loaded down with ice. I'm glad I did, too, because right after I'd melted most of the weight off the tender branches, we got a second round of sleet which bent it right back over. I'm just glad that second round didn't land on top of the first round.

Not sure about my weeping willow though. I wasn't able to get all the way to it, but it's still doubled over, even though the ice has melted. Hopefully it didn't lose its top?

Oh- and luckily, my wife cut all of our tulips and daffodils last night. We've got a vase full of them looking beautiful inside, instead of a yard full of them looking mournful outside. so yay!

Krista, How are the fruit tree blooms looking this morning? If y'all didn't go lower than 30 degrees and it didn't stay that cold for too long, they may survive.

I lost my fruit tree blooms 5 or 6 cold spells ago. At least I know in advance I won't be spending half of June and July harvesting plums and peaches and making jelly and freezing peaches, so I won't have to worry about running out of jelly jars. I'd rather have the fruit though.

Lisa, I'd believe the half-inch difference. We've had that much of a difference on our property from rain gauges placed about 300' apart, and once, we got a half-inch of rain and our next-door neighbors barely got any. I stood in my yard and looked south and could see where the rain ended just a few feet south of our fence line. That was such an odd thing to see.

Ben, I hate to hear that about the trees. I hope they were able to hold up under the weight of the ice and not start breaking and collapsing.

Your weeping willow should be okay even if the top snaps off. Willows bounce back really well and really fast.

When sleet, snow or bad hail are forecast, I cut daffodils and even irises in advance and bring them in too so we can enjoy them. It is a lot better than looking at the pathetically sad, damaged blooms after the weather hits.

Dawn

Am hoping we didn't get too cold last night. Mesonet is showing 31 was our low at the closest station, but a few weeks ago our fridge was on the fritz so I pushed our Min/Max thermometer into service there and hadn't put it back outside). I didn't get home from work until 1am and was too tired to worry about it, so am letting the onions and asparagus fend for themselves (I'd harvested all the ready asparagus Tues night). When I woke up at 8, the tv showed 30 degrees but jumped almost immediately to 32, so I think it's a close thing. I looked around this morning before I left the house and we don't have any limbs down (unlike the park across the street where the Bradford pears look like a slasher went to work), and the onion tops and asparagus ferns are still vertical. It's probably still too early to tell the effects of the temps, so we shall see what develops.

We didn't freeze last night either so the Intellicast forecast was closest to right. Tonight is still in question, but so far, so good.

Well, it was beautiful out, with the ice on the branches and all.

{{gwi:1098421}} grapemyrtle at my house.

Time will tell, if I lost anything. At the moment, even the two forsythias from Lisa look just fine.

Moni

I got lucky and squeaked by. Everything seems to have survived. I put buckets over my tomatillos and a few tomatoes, but all the rest of my tomatoes which were in the ground were exposed. (I've got backups. They were in the house where it was warm.) Both the tomatillos and tomatoes look like they had a rough night out on the town, but other than that I think they will be fine.

I live in the southern portion of Oklahoma so the temps were a bit warmer here. What an odd spring... I'm afraid that when we finally warm up and stay there we will rapidly progress to summer temperatures.

Last night the NWS said 33 for us and we went to 33 or 34 depending on which thermometer you looked at.

Tonight the NWS says 38 so I was feeling pretty good about tonight, and then our local TV met said he expects 33 and maybe some frost for Marietta. Grrrr! Who to trust? Usually when he disagrees with the NWS, he is the one who is right.
Nothing I have in the garden, except a handful of marigolds, would be damaged at 33 although sometimes tender potato foliage can take a hit from frost. It will regrow but I hate to see them set back when they are doing so well.

Maybe after I see his weather report on the 6 pm news, if he doesn't take back that 33, then I'll run outside and throw row covers over at least the potatoes that are tallest.

The greenhouse is full of plants that had been hanging out inside on the last two cold nights and I am not moving them again. The greenhouse held heat well the last two nights so I think those plants will be fine.

I am trying hard not to look at the cold weather the models are showing for late next week and let it talk me out of planting this weekend.

Nothing here showed any damage from 33 or 34 degrees and that includes warm-season tomato and pepper vounteers that have popped up in some beds and containers.

Mia, Those poor Bradford pears....they sure are pretty for that week or so they're in bloom, but then they struggle so much with our weather. Ice seems especially hard on them.

I'm so ready for this cold weather to go away and stay away.

Dawn, I think they are pretty but they are so smelly and weak-limbed I would never plant one. I'm going to suggest to our HOA that they replace them with Chinese Pistache trees - we planted one at our old house, and it was a beautiful, hardy tree. We planted a lacebark elm, too, but it didn't come through ice storms quite as well as the pistache, so I wouldn't necessarily recommend it for a public park.

Out here in SW Logan County the trees were coated with ice and were very pretty, but I haven't seen any limbs down out here. Our power went out briefly twice but we're on the eastern edge of Cimarron Electric and with most of their lines west of us it isn't unusual to have some flickers or outages when the winds are kicking up out there. Today I drove to Bethany and began to see tree limbs down once I was south of the Kilpatrick Turnpike, and in Bethany itself there were a lot of limbs on the ground. At one home an entire Bradford pear had split in half and one side went one way and the other side went the other. Fortunately they had fallen away from the home and not toward it. Sad to see an entire tree lost.

Suzie