how cold have you seen it in central oregon?! (Bend: live in, moving)

[montanagirl]

Hello!! I just wanted to ask locals in the Bend/Redmond/Prineville-etc area to give us all an idea of exactly how cold you have seen your weather there...
(In my neck of the woods--north central montana-- on Jan 15th, 2005 it was
-31 below zero.)..not always that cold, but gets there sometimes..
In the last..say.. 5 yrs or so what is the lowest you have seen temps drop? I think this would give more people an idea of what extreme weather they really may be up against if moving there..hows the wind there and water out of the tap? Easy to grow your own veggies there like tomatoes if the ground is improved ?!!
--Can't wait!! Thanks..MG

[tiffela74]

my folks live in Bend, (for about 4yrs now) and I dont believe its been lower than the teens, average more about 20-40degrees in the Dec/Jan.....I dont live there, this is just heresay from them and a few visits here and there.
I havent heard any complaints about the wind from them, nor have I noticed it while there (but then again, i live at the beach, so im used to it being breezy a lot)
I think its pretty farm friendly there, they get a good amount of sunny days, i thnk the average being about 300sunny days, and nothing real extreme in either temp direction.
hopefully someone who lives there can help more though.
Best of luck!
Tiffany

[lifes2short]

We do not live in Bend, but do visit several times a year. We were there last week and one morning it was 4 degrees.

[Tesaje]

According the data on the Bend City-Data page, the average summer low temps are well below 55 degrees. That means growing tomatoes will be a challenge as they need nighttime temps to be above 55 degrees to set fruit.

[PNW-type-gal]

Record lows are well below zero - but they're records, and not even close to common. Looking back through about 5 years of weather data, it usually dips into the single digits (but the single digits above zero) 2-3 times a month in Dec, Jan, Feb.

And you can grow tomatoes here, you just have to find short-season cool-weather determinate types, which are pretty common in the local nurseries. Somewhat of a pain, because they're an all-at-once producer.