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david52_gw

Batten down the hatches

david52 Zone 6
11 years ago

Weather forecast for here:

High Wind Warning

Red Flag Warning

Wind Advisory

Today: Areas of blowing dust after noon. Mostly sunny, with a high near 81. Windy, with a south southwest wind between 20 and 30 mph, with gusts as high as 55 mph.

Tonight: Areas of blowing dust before midnight. Partly cloudy, with a low around 50. Windy, with a south wind 30 to 35 mph decreasing to between 15 and 20 mph. Winds could gust as high as 55 mph.

Saturday: Mostly sunny, with a high near 73. Very windy, with a south southwest wind 15 to 20 mph increasing to between 35 and 40 mph. Winds could gust as high as 65 mph.

Saturday Night: Mostly clear, with a low around 36. Windy, with a southwest wind between 30 and 35 mph becoming calm. Winds could gust as high as 60 mph.

Sunday: Sunny, with a high near 66. West southwest wind between 5 and 15 mph, with gusts as high as 25 mph.

The sky is already tan from the dust, but we're not getting the smoke from the big fire in southern New Mexico - where the conditions are such that they aren't even trying to fight it yet.

Anyway, I hope my tomato plants survive this. Last year, with similar conditions, half of them just fizzled, had turned up leaves, and never recovered. And with a forecast low of 37, a frost is a distinct possibility.

I had moved out a dozen or so containers full of pepper plants the other day, but the wind/low humidity was so brutal I had to move them back in.

Comments (26)

  • mexicanhat
    11 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I am so glad my 'maters are still in the cold frame & not getting whipped. We had an incredible gust here two days ago (microburst?) that broke an 8" thick leader branch out of a big tree!

    I wondered if a frost would follow the cold front out.

  • polygonum_tinctorium
    11 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    It's quite windy here along the Palmer Divide, too, and is supposed to be even windier over the weekend. Today our weather is cloudy and in the 40s, not at all like the sunny/75 forecast! I'm not even putting my tender stuff outside today!

    I'm assembling wall-of-waters to put things out over the weekend as soon as the weather warms up again. I am still planting a few things from the plant swap -- the cool-tolerant things that go into protected areas will still get planted. The clouds and cooler weather might help them adjust without as much transplant stress.

    We certainly can get rain and frosts well into June. It's always hard with the warm-weather things. We have such a short season, but it does no good to put them out to get shocked or killed by a late-season cold spell.

    Next up: hail protection strategies.

  • colokid
    11 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Every year I say the same thing. Put a bucket over them and a rock on the bucket.
    Real world: On Wednesday I took my buckets off and place cages on the tomatoes.--how it that for timing?
    KennyP, the old guy that should know better.

  • david52 Zone 6
    Original Author
    11 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Every year, I plant the tomato seeds later and later. And every year, they grow just as tall - and at 2 feet, start flopping over in the green house. So I can either

    1 ) have some mess of 18 pot trays pots and tangled plants that looks like Medusa's bad hair day and try and untangle them and plant the now-3 foot long plants first week of June, breaking off half of them,

    2 ) set them out too early - like last week - and do the bucket/rock thing, or more likely, heap up a bunch of grass clippings when the frost comes around.

    Anyway, the latest batch of 2 foot high tomatoes started life off as seeds 6 weeks ago. Now if its a cloudy spring, those same plants would only be about 4 inches high......

    Today's forecast is worse, 35-40 mph steady winds with gusts up to 60-70 mph. But, so far anyway, most of the tomatoes are still alive.

    Fingers crossed.....

  • Skybird - z5, Denver, Colorado
    11 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Until a couple hours ago I was starting to think all the dire wind predictions were bunk---but they weren't! It was windy yesterday morning and they predicted winds up to 40 or 50 mph during the day, and by noon it was virtually calm. Stayed pretty much that way over nite. For today they were predicting gusts up to 60 mph, and there was barely a gentle breeze all morning. I had my fingers crossed at that point--and got some stuff done in the yard! About 3:00 the dire predictions happened! I'd say the gusts are up to about 40 mph now! Guess I should just be glad it wasn't blowin' all day yesterday--but I'm definitely done out in the yard till this Blows Over---so to speak!

    And now there are "health alerts" about the smoke--blowin' up from the south! Thank you Arizona and New Mexico! You must have it even worse than Denver down there at Dolores, David! Wind's supposed to shift from south to more west tomorrow, so maybe that'll help clear it out again!

    Earlier in the week we had a really windy day, and when I went out and looked at my veggies--all still in pots and being carried around the yard to keep them in sun during the day and sleeping on my little deck overnite--all the eggplant leaves were totally "curled up!" OMG! I've been babying these things for nearly two months now, and they looked like goners! It had been in the 40's overnite, and I wasn't sure what was wrong with them. The cold made the most sense! I brought them in for the rest of the day and over that nite and they perked up pretty quickly. Apparently the wind was just sucking the water out of them faster than the roots could suck it up! They were sitting in the sun out on the grass today when the wind picked up and they started to do the same thing pretty quickly--so they got a Wind Reprieve up on the deck where they're more sheltered--and they "uncurled" again as soon as they got some protection! Sure am glad I haven't gotten around to putting them in the ground yet!

    Next problem is that if this wind keeps up all nite tonite I'll spend the whole nite laying in bed awake waiting for one of the huge limbs from the neighbor's junk cottonwood trees to come crashing thru my bedroom window! The house has been abandoned for nearly a year now and I've called Thornton code enforcement to have them taken down--but nothing has happened yet--and when it gets this windy I do NOT go down to that end of the yard when I'm outside, and I do NOT sleep! More than half of one of them is completely dead this year, and with the other one which actually partly overhangs my house, the part over my yard is mostly dead--trying to grow leaves on "my side" but just developing some warped little things like the now dead one did last year. Hope it's not too long till I see some action in getting rid of them! (And I love to watch them doing it when BIG trees are taken down!)

    I checked your weather and see you're going down into the 30's tonite--with up to 60 mph winds, David! Hope you're managing to hang in there!

    Skybird

  • polygonum_tinctorium
    11 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    It's been very windy all day here a bit south of you, skybird. The wind is really blowing! I took in all my unplanted things this morning when the breeze started picking up. I'll plant everything tomorrow after the winds finally die down. Anything tender is going into wall-o-waters in case we get one last frost or snow.

    We have plenty of smoke here, too. That must be a fast-growing fire for the smoke to still be so noticeable so far from the source.

    I hope my already planted things survive the wind. I hope the trees in your area don't collapse on anything important for you, skybird. Scary! Can you sleep somewhere else in your house tonight, just in case?

    Ditto for the rest of you. Don't blow away!

  • highalttransplant
    11 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    My forecast has been pretty much identical to David's, and very accurate.

    I'm following Kenny's advice, since I already planted some of my peppers and tomatoes out last weekend.

    The sky is brown, and we've had wind gusts in the 45 - 50 mph range for the past 10 hours.

    My bigger concern is the low tomorrow night, which is predicted to be 33 degrees! I have 2 earthboxes, and numerous other containers that will need to be moved to either the garage or the covered porch.

    Hope everyone's plants pull through this!

    Bonnie

  • Zinnia1
    11 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Wow, I am glad I decided to visit the site tonight. I have been in CO for just under a year and couldn't figure out what the heck the heavy brown haze over the foothills was (I live in west Littleton just a few miles east of 470), or the what the brown haze over Denver was. At first I thought it was just humidity from today's hot weather and all the rain lately. Then I thought, no, humidity is not brown (this looked more like smog over Houston or Los Angeles). Now I know what it was, dust!

  • Skybird - z5, Denver, Colorado
    11 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Nope, humidity isn't brown, Zinnia! LOL! In addition to which on the 5 o'clock news they said the humidity was 4%! Even if it was BLACK there wouldn't have been enough to see it! :-) Just checked and it's all the way up to 8% now! And, yep, it sure does look like smog! Sure am glad those "good old days" are pretty much gone here in Denver! About the only time we have that sort of a problem anymore is when we get a real serious temperature inversion, and that doesn't happen all that often.

    Too bad you weren't out here in '02 when, as (ex) Governor Bill Owens said, "It looks like all of Colorado is burning!" If we have to be living with the smoke, at least it isn't Colorado that's burning up this time! I remember flying over the western half of the state in '02 and looking out of the cockpit window one time after dark, and there were fires all over the place. It really DID look like "all of Colorado was burning," but at least I didn't get in trouble for thinking that like Bill Owens did for saying it!

    Polygonum, I could sleep in the "guest room" downstairs, but it's still on the same corner of the house so whatever happens to the windows upstairs would probably happen to the windows downstairs too as any limbs came down. It's not that I think I'd really be injured or something (not sure what would happen to the house!), it's just the fact that "things" could suddenly come Crashing Down that keeps me from sleeping! I'll just be glad when those Nasties are GONE! The wind is kind of "coming and going" now, and it has definitely let up some from this afternoon and earlier this evening--when my television picture kept blowing away!

    LOL, Bonnie! I keep looking at your eclectic little Pot & WOW Garden and thinking about how worried you were about what it was gonna look like and what the neighbors would think of veggies in the front yard that first year you grew the veggies out there. Pots and bricks and WOWs, oh, my!

    Hope it doesn't get TOO cold for you guys on the Western Slope.

    Skybird

  • Zinnia1
    11 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    skybird, Ha! It actually took me a good 15 minutes to make that connection! I moved here from Michigan, where being surrounded by 20% of the world's fresh water supply, humidity levels are very comfortable. However; following heavy rains with high temps, humidity can get so thick it looks like fog all day long. That was when I realized that high humidity is NOT brown and something else was going on!!

  • david52 Zone 6
    Original Author
    11 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Forecast to 37, actually went to 31 F - gambled by not covering plants. I'll go check later, with any luck, the leaves froze and not the stems, if so they recover pretty quickly. If not, they often come up from the roots so fast that I'll still get a decent harvest. And I still have 35 odd plants in the greenhouse.

    There's fires all over the place now, one up near Paradox, one near Pagosa, etc. The conditions now are the same as 2002 .... not good.

  • polygonum_tinctorium
    11 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Did your house (and the dead tree limbs) survive the night, skybird?

    It's still breezy here, but I'm starting the planting anyway!

    It's not nearly as bad as '02 on this side of the mountains. Good thing, too! I feel for those of you on the dry side. Those hot, dry, fire-danger years are no fun. Stay safe, everyone. May we all get the rain we need.

    We have temps in the 30s forecast for tonight. I'll either wait another day for the really tender stuff, or just use the wall-o-waters and hope they do their thing.

  • david52 Zone 6
    Original Author
    11 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Update from the garden tour - most of the tomatoes came through unscathed - as luck would have it, the 'Cold Set' I tried for cool weather fruit set are complete toast, wilted lumps on the garden floor.

    The basil, by a window in the greenhouse, isn't looking too hot either.

  • digit
    11 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I am sorry about those losses, David. Bonnie, did you have frost? I could have said that frost with pots (& holes) work very poorly for a 10mph breeze! I lost a good number of tomato plants a few years ago that way.

    Interesting if sad, about your Cold Set tomatoes. The ones I lost moving them out of a heated greenhouse and into an unheated plastic tunnel (where they only had 37F to contend with) were only the Bloody Butchers. Oh, there were a lot of wilted and lost leaves but the BB's died! Remarkably, they would have produced the very earliest fruit in the garden . . .

    Yes, 37F will kill plants when they've never experienced anything colder than 60F - my experience. It may have been that cold in my garden this morning. The nearest Wunderground volunteer is about 2miles away and that thermometer said 38.1F. Forecast was for 42F and my tomatoes have been out since Thursday. Unfortunately, the next day there were gusts to 38mph and almost as bad on Saturday.

    May set some peppers out today. The heat in the greenhouse is not coming back on. I've had about all I can take of coddling these things this year!! I haven't been in the big veggie garden since Friday morning but think that things are okay out there - tomatoes set in very deep and they were hardened off well before going out.

    Yes, I started seed later than just about ever this year - after the record cool early months of 2011. I wasn't going to be quite as desperate to find room & good conditions for them during the final weeks they were here at home. All that additional cushion - is gone. I'll trust the weather service from here on out & that better be good enuf.

    Here is Wishing All of You the Best of Luck with the wind and growing conditions.

    Steve

  • digit
    11 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I should say that my losses mentioned above were from earlier years.

    So far, and if there are no surprises when I see them today, I haven't killed any of the tender babies. (Skybird -- Earl & Dr. Wyche are okay, I bet. :o)

    I've still got a chance to mess up with setting out the peppers, eggplants, melons and cucumbers . . .

    Steve

  • david52 Zone 6
    Original Author
    11 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I just checked and we have a freeze warning out for tonight, mid-20's. I better get busy with the pots and rocks and grass clippings and all that.

  • highalttransplant
    11 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Yep, just checked my forecast after reading your post, David. We have the freeze warning too!

    Last night, we only got down to 36 degrees, so everything looks okay at the moment. I've moved all the peppers in containers into the garage for the night, but now Steve has me second guessing my pot/rock solution. Maybe I should drape a row cover over the whole mess, once (if) the winds die back some.

    Skybird, you're right that I used to fret a lot about my garden, but in my defense, HOA's can be a real pain sometimes. I don't worry as much anymore though. Even on a bad day my garden looks better than most of the generic subdivision landscaping around here, LOL.

    David, I sure hope the rest of your plants make it through the night unscathed.

  • david52 Zone 6
    Original Author
    11 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    ... and of course it didn't freeze. I snapped 4 or 5 plants trying to cover them last evening.....

    As for the pot/rock thing, that has worked for me pretty well all the way down to 25 F, but those are with plants that had been out in the garden for a few weeks and properly toughened up. Fresh from the greenhouse, they don't do as well. They also have to be small enough to fit under the pots w/o breaking.

  • mexicanhat
    11 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    So... Do I dare move mine out of the coldframe yet?

    I haven't even planted my garden yet, to be honest. Thought about it last week, but with the wind and cold warnings, it didn't seem like a good plan.

  • easternco_gardener
    11 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    So much for the apricot tree. The winds on Saturday blew down half of the developing fruit. I picked up the windfall apricots and have them in a brown paper bag to see if they'll ripen enough for salvage. My hopes aren't high, though. I'm not sure if they're developed enough to ripen. The remainder of the fruit is clinging to the trees like a cat on a Teflon wall, trying to stay on in the midst of 30-40mph gusts. So in addition to the hail that robbed me of a crop the first year here, the late freeze and snow that robbed me of a crop the second year, I can chalk up the wind this year as the destroyer of any potential preserves that might have come out of the orchard. Thankfully, the apples and pears are small and didn't suffer the same fate as the apricots. Aarrgh!

  • b2alicia
    11 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Oh my! My sympathies to everyone with wind damage! It's been crazy.

    Only thing affected here is the peony bush...all the blossoms are resting on the ground now.

    Very chilly here this morning, but still really windy!

  • david52 Zone 6
    Original Author
    11 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    I just drove into town to drop off my DD at school, and the frost was on in the lower draws, but not on the tops. At a couple of places with side roll irrigation, the lower half froze, the upper didn't.

    I dunno - I'm planting out everything today/tomorrow.

  • digit
    11 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    The Weather Service is predicting temperatures in the 30's Monday morning. Let's see, that will be June 4th.

    The claim was that there was a 70F day recently. Since the wind gusts were down in the 20mph's that day, it did feel a little warmer. It will be the only daytime high that warm in the last 2 weeks.

    The eggplant will be out in the garden by tomorrow. The melons went out yesterday. Next month? Junuary.

    Steve

  • gardenbutt
    11 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    The only toms we have out are in wows the rest of the garden is still sitting in the greenhouse,,
    Last week brought lots of rain, cold temps and some nice wind coming off the lake which we rarely have hit our place,,Lots of broken limbs and such laying about..
    But at least we did not get the snow that Bozeman and Greatfalls got,, down at my kids an hour drive they had a small amount of snow and freezing temps,,Being the slow moving mom who has not separated out everyone elses plants yet this year I can say they did not have any casualties and should be happy they were safely tucked away in the geenhouse
    Steve your ahead of us

  • highalttransplant
    11 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    We didn't get any frost the night they predicted it. As a matter of fact, it was colder last night, briefly dipped to 35 degrees, and I didn't have anything covered, but everything looked okay this morning. A couple of the peppers were a little droopy, but once the sun warmed them up, they bounced right back.

    I direct sowed a bunch of stuff the past couple of days - beans, cukes, melons, squash, popcorn, and pumpkins, but I'm going to hold out till the weekend to plant the rest of the peppers and tomatoes. Winds are in the 25 - 30 mph range today, not too awful, but enough for me to hold off planting anything else.

  • mayberrygardener
    11 years ago
    last modified: 9 years ago

    Good gravy, I'm so glad I don't often watch the news, and wasn't reading all of this. The wind was awful here, but as everything was still in pots waiting to be planted, I just snuggled everything up against the west-facing side of the house, and let 'em fend for themselves. Several pots got blown over, but nothing too tragic--they have all gotten to be VERY good friends, as they're all mashed up next to each other so that they can't blow around/down too much. I finally was able to get some peppers planted out yesterday--got about 40 into their containers, and staked every dang one of them except for that beauty that I got from Greg at the swap; it's back up against a wall, though...

    Freeze? Good thing it didn't--I was completely unprepared for it. I figured: if it freezes this late in the game, then we're all in trouble! Still, if it's cold enough to "frost" but the breeze is blowing, the moisture can't settle on the plants... at least, judging by if I have to scrape my windshield in the morning!