03/21/05 The bloom, and the frost?, Part 2

03/21/05 The bloom, and the frost?, Part 2

Fruit industry fieldmen like Nate Squires of Northwest Wholesale are worried about the potential of frost, what with the early bloom of cherries and other trees as a result of the mild weather of the last two months. SQUIRES: We are advanced in our development and that's going to make a big difference on how much we lose in a cold temperature period. Growers for the most part did not see frost this past weekend due to cloudy, sometimes wet, and in some cases windy conditions. But what about the long-range forecast? Meteorologist Tim Creek says growers could get a break there as well, starting later in the week. CREEK: And I do see signs of a general shift in the overall weather pattern where we might get into a stretch of seven, ten, fourteen days of storms coming at us from the west and southwest. This would do a couple things. This would bring much needed moisture into the Northwest but also with increased storm activity; we would see many nights where weather disturbances move through or clouds move through, or where we have winds through, that keep temperatures up above average. At the same time, considerable clouds and a threat of precipitation will tend to keep those high temperatures from getting too extreme, keeping them in the fifties where the blossom degree units don't quite add up as quickly as they have been doing. But there are other concerns about the early bloom that aren't frost related. More in our next program.
Previous Report03/18/05 The bloom, and the frost?, Part 1
Next Report03/22/05 The bloom, and the pests?