It, however, gives me concern for the overall pattern, which seems to be about the same as last year. It looks to me like the same monsoon type pattern along the east coast, which translated to cold and dryish here in Michigan. I don't want another summer of 38 degree lows in July when nothing except cabbages will grow.

But, I don't have much say in the matter, do I?

Yep, very nice weather ahead. I got a ton of plants outside today. A little cloudy today, but there is lots of sun in the forecast. Looks like no days below 60 in the 10 day forecast (for a day time temp), and this weekend will be in the low 70s. Not as warm as people just a little bit inland, but still very nice spring weather. Im looking forward to lots of warm and sunny weather!
Apparently my coldest night was 28F, but if that was true, there would be no way that my mandevilla would be alive with no damage, so Im going to say that my lowest temp this month was right around freezing. This month did have some very crazy weather (this is the wettest march on record for my area, and lots of others in the Northeast), but overall, temps were above average, and not too bad for March. But spring really gets started in April!

Denninmi, Wow, 38F in the summer! Sounds like my worst nightmare! Hopefully that wont happen for you this summer because thats really awful. Well at least for now we can enjoy the warmer weather, and hopefully the weather will continue to stay warm, but it is spring and you never know what can happen.

Good luck!

Denninmi,the good news for you I think is that our Spring so far is 10 degrees warmer than last March and a warmer wetter Spring. Which translates into the season is very different so far. Last year our Spring was cool by NYC standards and my grapes and cherries did poorly and my peas did great.

TZ, my neighbor left their mandevilla out on some cold nites and it hung in there until it hit the low to mid 20s and it shed it leaves and she brought it inside ASAP.

Lows 70s sound great and a warm Resurrection Sunday (Easter).

Yea Greg
81 here yesterday and possibly 86 today.
I would be worried about this if we wouldn't have had the very cold winter we did,this is just a little evening out.
We finished March above normal thanks to some warm weather at the close of the month,only our second above normal month(highs)since Nov-2007

I agree, this year is shaping up more like a "normal" summer than the past 3 consequitive years. When the NWS pushes the likeliness of tornado breakouts further east to include South Michigan as upper portion of the tornado alley, that usually ends up a Hot and Humid summer. We are very due to that type of normal summer...

This is the first time that the Magnolias and Stellatas have completely bloomed in March in 4 years. Another good sign...

Yep,
I agree a hot summer does seem eminent.
It was almost 90 here today and the forecast is normal or above all the way through the next 15 days!

We set a record of 83 here today. I think the summer will be normal also as long as it stays dry. Last year's very wet spring in the midwest contributed to the cool summer.

Nice weather everyone! We have been very lucky here in Va as well. I posted our forecast a few days ago, and the extended forecast seems to hold onto a warmer trend. I LOVE it! been in the 80's the last several days, suppose to be mid to upper 80's next two days, then a "fall" back into the upper 70's for a few days then back into the low 80's. Getting an early start to growth, which is nice!

"Getting an early start to growth, which is nice!"

Much needed for damage from this winter!

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Indeed it is Jim. For us it wasnt so much the temps that were so low, but most certainly a very wet winter.

Yep, a very wet winter here too. It didnt get too cold this past winter by me either (Lowest temp was 14F), but it was the duration of the cold, and the frequency of storms (lots of snow) that made this winter a bad one. We deserve a very nice spring and summer to make up for this past winter and even last summer which wasnt very warm and actually started off (in june) very cool and rainy.

Arriving back from PA last night I found the temps hovering around 69-70* at 7PM and still 66* at 11:30 pm. The butias are loving it and getting bushy.

The warm weather forecast continues for the east coast and even after temps adjusts downward they sustain in the low to mid 60s which is still above average.

Yeah even after this cold front (after one day in the high 50s), temps will be in the mid to upper 60s, even approaching 70s again later on next week. A very nice april so far, I really hope it continues. My plants are really liking the weather a lot and it seems like all the plants are growing now.

It has been a great March and April for growing palms I must agree.

Yesterday's 92* heat that stretched into a long hot nite really warmed up the ground for my palms. Even in March the greenhouse palms grew - nice to get a head start.

Its very nice to get a head start. My cannas are all mostly planted and although not all of them came up yet, they are about a week ahead of schedule. Unfortunately so many of my plants got burned from the heat. Its going to take a lot of growing to get them looking nice again.

Which ones got burned?

I am glad you moved the stag horns:)

My Musifolia from Statenisland(Dennis)is already up!-34(?) here tonight?
We'll see if Freeze-pruf protects it-come to think of it,I missed that one,better get'er done

I am doing a comparison(for fun) between WTC,weather-underground and Accuweather to see whos the most "accurate"Weather channel(weather.com) pretty much has it in the bag-ending Saturday

This I know...

Last April was warmer than May, June, July and August with a low of 35 degrees in the middle of July!

It rained and stayed cloudy for days because of the stupid throth that is still sitting off the East Coast, which made its day view today again, that only dissappeared but for a few days...

The only thing they grew up in Maine last year that even grew to maturity was yes, CABBAGE! Every vegatable from potatoes to tomatos rotted and never gain maturity. They got mold and blight from extremely cooler temps with the ground never warming. The corn, well that was a joke!

I also LOST ALL my roses and flowering almonds to blight and desease!

Please tell me the troth will take a hike, and the heat from the middle of the country will finally move east, or that the Bermuda high will rule and not the easterly winds and fog.

Love you all anyway! You are a bunch of warm and sunshiny people :-)

Brooklyngreg...
A ton of plants got burned. Some pretty seriously, others arent that bad and are already adjusting to the extra sun. Some of the burned plants include...
My plumeria divine (still pushing a flower inflo. though), My areca got some burn, one of my variegated rubber trees got very badly burned and the other is perfectly fine, the stromanthe got some burn, but still has lots of healthy leaves, the peace lily is a little discolored, but surprisingly not that burned, my sago got some burn (that was really surprising to me), Im not sure how to determine if spanish moss is dead, but some of it is very brittle, other parts of it is perfectly fine though, also my hawaiian ti plant got a little burn, but nothing serious, the mother in law toungues are a little discolored, but nothing noticeable, some of the blooms on my camellia have brown tips, but new and healthy blooms are quickly replacing them, and the queen palm is a little discolored. Also the regular green form of my Dracaena Marginata have a little leaf burn, but the tricolor form which has vairegated colored leaves has absolutely no burn on it at all.
The staghorn ferns are still doing great even after yesterday's hot temp and surprisingly my philodendrons are perfectly fine even though they are usually the first burned.

Jim, very nice canna. I think TWC is pretty much the winner when it comes to accuracy and a majority of new channels get their forecast from them. I also like accuweather.com because they do explain whats going on and I also appreciate them trying to get a 15 day forecast even though its not accurate at all after 6-7 days. Wunderground.com has some nice model runs and also is a great site for monitoring storms. I wonder who the winner for accuracy is for you.

Meyermike... April was warmer here too than all the summer months and other spring months (or at least recorded the warmest temps). I think we only had 3 or 4 90s for the entire year with 2 (maybe 3) of them being in April. Usually somewhere around 20-25 days give or take end up in the 90s. And Im not sure if there has ever been a June that hasnt reached 90F before last year and last june we didnt get 1 day that was average (which is 84F-85F) and I think the mean (thats the average of both the night and day temp) was around the mid 60s. Definitely among the coldest and wettest june ever (possibly the coldests and wettest june ever). Still even though some of my plants actually did start to rot, they all grew well for the rest of the summer.
I cant imagine it ever being too cold for tomatoes during the summer. They never really to that great in my yard because the bugs get to them before I do, but they always at least fruit well. I hope this summer will be much warmer for the entire east coast. Im not sure if I want 100 degree temps, but some humidity and 90s would be nice. At least for now we will remain above average.

Good luck everyone!

35 in July! dang-where are you located?
I didn't realize it was that bad in the east!
As far as the dip in the jet,it has vacated the mid-west for the most part,mainly ridging here and warmer than normal March(only the second above since Nov 2007)and so far April is WAY above.

T7 all your stuff will recover,it seems like plants that grow a lot over winter have a tough time adjusting to sun,I put my stuff on the east side of the yard for a few days at least and then move over.

Let us know if that freezeproof works Jim. Your plants are off to a fast start thanks to our early warm-up. Our ground temps here I am sure jumped from the 40s to 60s and may settle in the upper 50s for now.

Hi TZ, Sorry to hear about the burn I've been there. I often practice what Jim said and move even hot sun loving plants into part shady spots first until they adjust. Especially with a strong Spring sun and record high temps. Funny, so far the palms seem to be immune to this problem - but then again palms denote warmer areas. Not sure why moving indoor sun-loving plants outside without an adjustment burns them, maybe a plant sugar thing, but when they are indoors over winter they cannot take sudden hot sun and need a gradual transition. The cameila burn looks like it was from the winter cold and it had those brown areas before the drastic warm-up. They shall recover. My 6 foot potted bay tree got burned too!

Meyermike. I believe your report. Our summers in NYC were hotter just a few years back (many 1980s and some 1990s) and temps have dropped. I recall heatwaves 90+ or almost 90 for loooong stretches. Heatwaves back to back. Back then I am sure you were warmer as well. Now our summer temps are in the 80s constantly- where's the heatwaves??? Where did the 90s go - VB for now. In that regard do not even try tomatos unless you have some sort of vented greenhouse structure. I went to college near Syracuse NY and the nights are too cool for them in Zone 5. They like warm soil and grow alot at night also. I am Italain and grow tomatos all the time. For cool Zone 5 summers peas, lettuce, carrots and many others should all give you some healthy food.

brooklyngreg,

We even use to hit the 100 degree mark years ago on a regular basis...

For the past few latest years, we have had no BIG thunderstorms, LOTs and LOTs of sea breezes that use to go bye bye by the end of April, no Bermuda highs on a regular basis, and too cold to hit the beach anymore. The sand use to be to hot to walk on.
In the past 4 years, I have only had to use the AC just a couple of times here and there each year.

I miss those hot summer nights tropical nights, when the June bugs use to come out because it was so warm. I havn't seen June bugs for 2 years now..:-(

I hope we are not going to cool down for years to come, but in fact I hope we do a huge turn around, and start seeing warmer and hotter summers..We use to go days on end with temps in the 90's. Now we would be lucky to hold on to more than 3 sunny hot days in a row..

Good luck everyone.Let us hope for a much better year.;-)

And up to a few years ago, I thought I would be able to plant a few palms in ground and keep them there through a whole winter..

Mike

Jim...
Thanks for the encouragement about the burned plants. Some are already showing signs of new growth that is green and adjusted to the sun.
greg...
You are right, the leaves got burned by the winter, most likely from the wind and the winter sun on days that were below freezing (I hear that camellias really hate winter sun). Fortunately all the winter damaged leaves are now falling off and new leaves are growing in its place. Camellias are pretty good at keeping themselves looking nice and clean.
But I think the flowers themselves were burned by the heat. The good news is all the damaged flowers now have fallen off (and there were only 6 or 7 flowers badly damaged) and many new flowers have taking there place and they are looking very nice and healthy. The forecast calls for very spring like weather!

Meyermike...
I hope you get a warm and sunny summer! Maybe this cooler pattern for you is only temporary. Good luck with the weather!

Good luck everyone!

Plants don't have their protective coating on them after being inside,plants that get more sunlight indoors will always adjust quicker than those in shade,growlights,etc.

An east exposure works really well,I don't worry to much about bananas and such though as they grow back their leaves so fast once it stays nice out.
This year I managed to save some leaves on some of the nanars(at least the ones that weren't blown off!),they are growing much faster for it!
A warm start to spring really helps too,my Basjoos will be further along this year than ever-some of the past springs/early summers have been so cool that they didn't even start going until June.
I think this year they may already be taller in June than they were all last year!(-:
.....if this warm weather keeps up-

Unfortunately I dont have that much of an eastern exposure so I guess they will have to suffer a little until they get new growth. They have about 2 months before summer really gets started and if the weather stays warm, they should hopefully look pretty decent by then.

I think your plants are really going to be huge this year as long as the weather remains warm.

Good luck!

So far this year in many locations have been warmer than last year. Much warmer and its becoming patternized. If it keeps up we will have some real hot weather more often. I notice we keep getting these strong warm spells and even now the temps remain above normal even when we cool off to the 60s.

Another warm weekend in Brooklyn. Even urban coastal areas were in the low 70s and a few places deeper into the city hit the upper 70s. It was a entire day event. It was warm all day and even most of the night.

Palms, grapes, flowers, peas, lettuce, figs everything is growing.

Here in central Oklahoma it seems that we have gone from winter straight to summer tempereature wise. But you can tell it is spring by the 30MPH winds and the thick green coating of pollen on everything. All my plants are now in the large portable greenhouse protected from the wind and enjoying the filtered sunshine and warm air. My bananas are up about 6 inches and looking good... best of luck to all this growing season...

I do not know...Kind of weird to me..

This week we are back into the 50's and even colder by weeks end with lows in the 30's!

Once again the cold "troth" that seems to be the rule has blanketed the North East..

I would love to see more warm coming from the south than coming from Canada and our cold ocean...Last year after a warm spell in April and one in May, the troth ruled our summer and most of the year..Please keep your fingers crossed for us..

Pray for us that the cold fronts and troths stop settling upon us...It is impossible for warmth to stick around like this..Thanks..

Mike..:-)

I hope that cold air moves very very far north and out of your way meyermike. Are the trees even in bloom yet that far north?

Over here the trees are all green or in bloom. Temps this week are all average and in the 60s. Nothing warm, but still very nice and spring like. I dont mind the 60s so Im very okay with this forecast. So far 42F is the lowest temp of the month. Frosts are usually possible until mid april on average, so if this mild weather continues we will have a huge jump start to the growing season.

Good luck everyone!

yeah, I'm not complaining about cold here either. In fact, I have what I think is HEAT related damage on my beautiful Dawn Redwood--think those days in the upper 80's and lower 90's combined with wind and low humidity really burned the newly emerging leaves. I get the distinct feeling that the East is setting up for a fairly serious DROUGHT this year!

I agree, I think that we could be in for a drought this year. Usually we have a surplus of water in my area (and really the entire mid atlantic region) with thunderstorms comming almost daily at times during the summer and precipitation being pretty evenly spread through the year. Its hard to tell if this drier weather recently is a sign of things to come because April is a pretty dry month by me and usually thats the time of the year when brush fires occur. Then once the humidity of the summer comes in, it rains much more often, but I think when May comes, we will have a good idea of the pattern we will be dealing with this summer.

Good luck!

This Spring seems like a relatively "normal" spring for us in the Lower Great Lakes. We've had predominantly warm to even hot weather and absolutely no snow in March. We had a hard frost late last week but that hasn't slowed down any of the leafing and blooming.

There isn't much that is not blooming or leafing here. My Dawn Redwood is fairing pretty good and even the natural forests are starting to leaf out.

This seems a bit early, but not exceptional.

I hope South Michigan has a hot humid summer, it's been 3 years since any normal summer weather.... Just small bouts of the hazies last couple years not lasting more than 3-5 days. Usually we have 1-2 month with hot / humid with a couple short breaks near 80F w/o humidity.

There we have it...All that hot weather has made most my trees bloom such as my cherry trees, my magnolias, perennials, and many others, just to watch them freeze to death and wither away before I can even enjoy the smel of their fragrancel due to the hard frost tonight!

If we can just get one normal spring to summer weather, just one year before I leave this earth, I will do a dance to the nature Gods...lol

Good luck everyone else...Maybe we will get the snow storms next month to make up for the lack of cold last week..lol

By the way, Hi everyone, and what a cute looking plant Jimhardy!

Mike..:-)

MeyerMike, generally we get normal high temps by by averaging the temps. But low and high temp swings are part of normal as long as there are not too many records broke. I know the fustration, but the Northeast is suppose to get these little cool/cold snaps or we would just keep heating up. As you drive southward down the east coast the cold snap reduces its intensity and duration. Yes, I agree last year was abnormally cool for us which made it worst for northern areas I figured.

Last year things were way cooler and slower here in metro New York. Everything has a head start this year like TZ said, what is unusual is that everything is blooming/opening at once and not in stages. We also keep getting days in the 70s which I like, but they just happen and are not forecast very well - like Thurday in suddenly going to be warm.

Greg
We have had 2 weeks worth of +70f weather here this spring.
By the end of this week about half those days will have
been over 80*-I really don't remember quite a streak like this /this early.

If anything can revive some of the damaged palms,this is it!
Some of my Banana plants are on their second leaf already!
I am lucky to have them in the ground(usually)by now,let alone growing already-last year they didn't do much until June.(-:

Your banana plants definately look much further along than barely mid April.

You have had more 80+ days than us. That's the downside of ocean breezes during warm Spring days for us. This is pretty much the warmest overall April I remember. The temps keep poping above normal 68 today and 70+ tomorrow. Our normal is 58-59.

Did you know when you post the temps for IA they are always currently reporting. Like today it says you are 81.

I think its auto updating
heres one for staten island

It must be like you said.

Yes, this time of year can be a little frustrating when you live close to the ocean. You can be on Main St. in town wearing shorts and a tee shirt, then walk half a mile to the beach, and need a jacket. But...a real benefit when the thick of Winter is upon us. Always a little warmer.

Yep, even this time of the year the ocean can be a benefit. It adds a few extra degrees at night especially now that the water is getting a little warmer. That can be the difference between a killer frost and no problems at all. But the days are unfortunately much cooler until May.

Wow, the official temperature right now in Metro Detroit is 86F. It is the highest temperature in the entire United States, now that's weird? Go figure...