Vermont Frost/Freeze Update: The Forecast And How To Survive If You're A Gardener

Things won't get nearly as bad as this severely frozen
daffodil clump endured back in April, 2020, but
the upcoming freeze Wednesday night has the 
potential to damage some garden plants. 

Although it's mild and still dry across Vermont early this morning, that nasty cold front is poised a little north of the Canadian border.  

It's set to sweep through this afternoon. The forecast has been consistent. This will be a brief, but real interruption to spring. 

A band of showers will sweep southward to southeastward through northern Vermont very late this morning and this afternoon.  Northern areas could get a light 0.1 to 0.2 inches of rain. It's not much, but it's badly needed.  However, the showers will fall apart as they  head south, so by the time you get to Route 4 and south, very little will fall. 

That has implications for a frigid May Wednesday in Vermont.  The northern rains should tamp down the fire danger a little bit. Not so in the south.  With dry conditions and strong, gusty north winds, any forest that start could spread quickly.  Very dry air won't help.  Relative humidities will drop into the teens during the afternoon, which is quite arid for Vermont. 

By the way, note that I said strong, gusty north winds. The temperature will crash tonight, and be down into the mid-30s by dawn.  Winds could gust to 25 mph at the time, putting our wind chills into the low to mid 20s! 

I knew I shouldn't have put away my winter coat for the summer the other day.  Dress your kids accordingly getting ready for school.   You might even see a little coating of snow on the mountain tops tomorrow. 

The whole day will be blustery and cold. Many of us won't get out of the upper 40s, when upper 60s is the normal high for this time of year. 

Then the freeze hits. By dawn Thursday, everybody in Vermont should be at or below freezing, except those of you right near Lake Champlain and within some bigger urban centers, like Burlington or perhaps downtown Rutland. (That's even iffy.)

I still worry about crop losses, but I think most of the apple orchards in the  Champlain Valley at least should do sort of OK.  Apple blossoms tend to get killed when the temperature drops to 29 degrees. Lows in most of the Champlain Valley should be in the 30 to 33 degree range, at least according to current forecasts.  It'll even be a little warmer than that in the Lake Champlain Islands. 

Of course, any bloom that freezes will never give us an apple later this year. 

Strawberry blooms freeze at 30 degrees. If you have some blooming, you night try turning a sprinkler on over them Wednesday night. Even if the water ices over the strawberries, it just might protect them. 

Especially in the banana belt of western Vermont, lots of us gardeners have hostas that are sprouting along with peonies and irises that are almost ready to bloom.

I think most of them will be OK if the temperature stays at or above 30 degrees or so.  Much lower than that and you might lose out on peony and iris blooms this year, but the plants themselves will survive for another year. 

After the frost, carefully cut away any leaves or stems that died in the frost.  For hostas, cut away completely dead leaves. Leaves that are mostly green but a little iffy around the edges should be left alone so that the hostas can use photosynthesis to recover. 

If you put your tomatoes in the garden already, most of you are screwed. Try covering them and hope for the best. If you're hardening out your tomatoes and peppers and such out on the back deck, drag 'em back inside today and leave them there until it warms up on Thursday. 

Many annual flowers you bought at the nursery are also sensitive to frost damage.  I'm glad I procrastinated and don't have mine out yet.  But the hibiscus that lives out on our sunny warm deck from May to September is certainly coming indoors tonight! And staying there until late Thursday morning. 

Thursday morning's temperatures will be near record lows in some parts of the state. The National Weather Service is forecasting a low of 27 in Montpelier Thursday. The record low for the date is 28 degrees.

In Burlington, the record low Thursday is 29 and forecasters don't think it will get quite that nippy.  The coldest hollows of the Adirondacks and Northeast Kingdom could reach the upper teens! 

Freezes like the one that is coming have become less and less common in the age of climate change. But as we well know, they can still happen. 

And this is far from unprecedented. 

It could be worse. For instance, an even later freeze than this one on May 31, 1961 dropped temperatures down to as low as 25 degrees in Burlington and 19 degrees in West Burke. That year, Vermont's apple crop was pretty much wiped out. 

Hopefully it won't get that bad. 

We also might not be done with this yet. Another frost and freeze still seems like it's in the cards for early next week, but it probably won't be as intense as the one that's about to hit.