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You'd be surprised as to how much freezing weather some palms can take. Where I live in Vancouver, we have a few kinds of palm trees that can survive here and we usually get a couple of weeks of consistently freezing weather every winter. It all comes down to which species you have.
How long did that Christmas snow last in South Texas? A day?
Down in Brownsville and McAllen is warmed up to about 50 F on Christmas day, but up towards Corpus Christi it was only in the low 40s. Houston reached the upper 40s, but in all locations the temperature seemed to drop quickly afterwards.
December 26th was a cold morning so maybe the snow stuck around until the afternoon? I can only make assumptions based on historical data, but would prefer to hear it from folks who were actually there when it happend.
You'd be surprised as to how much freezing weather some palms can take. Where I live in Vancouver, we have a few kinds of palm trees that can survive here and we usually get a couple of weeks of consistently freezing weather every winter. It all comes down to which species you have.
I wonder how the palms in the southeast (Texas, Florida, etc.) faired during the deep freezes in the 80s.
I wonder how the palms in the southeast (Texas, Florida, etc.) faired during the deep freezes in the 80s.
From what I understand…a lot of these “deep freezes” are really not all that deep. This last big region wide freeze in Florida (before this past January) event…was the January 1989 event. In both these cases from what I read…temps remained a few degrees above/below freezing for only a matter of hours. So not only are freezes at these latitudes infrequent but they are very short duration events. My parents have several coconut palms in their yard (condo common areas ) in Hollywood, Florida… and they were totally unfazed by the frosty conditions for a few hours.
One of the most interesting graphs I ever saw about cold and Florida…was from the book “Florida Weather” by M. Winsberg (1980). In one section…the book shows the total number of hours that NWS stations reported a temperature of 32 F (0 C) or lower between 1937 and 1967 for various locations around Florida: Orlando reported 694 hours for example…Melbourne and Ft Meyers reported 303 hours…and Miami reported 71 hours over the period from 1937 to 1967 (the data used in this book).
Think about that for a moment: Of the 262,800 hours between 1937 and 1967 (30 years/8760 hours)…only 71 hours in Miami managed to get down to 32 F or lower – lol.
You'd be surprised as to how much freezing weather some palms can take. Where I live in Vancouver, we have a few kinds of palm trees that can survive here and we usually get a couple of weeks of consistently freezing weather every winter. It all comes down to which species you have.
I agree, the Palms in the NYC area (usually Windmill Palms) have no choice but to endure below 32 degree weather. The average Winter low is about 30 F (usually early morning hours) but it "warms up" into the 40's during the day.
Snow is kinda overrated, it really wasn't that cold(28F) and the snow didn't last long at all. Most palms went through fine, although coconuts did have moderate cosmetic damage. The 80s cleared the Valley of anything tropical(mangoes, coconuts, tender palms), the area is slowly recovering. The only reason it doesn't look more like Florida is because the Valley is one of the most economically depressed areas in Texas.
While record and average lows show Brownsville/Port Isabel similar to Orlando/Tampa, normal winter lows in Brownsville are usually higher then Central Florida's about equivalent to South-Central Florida(Cape Coral, Vero Beach, Sarasota). This is because cold fronts tend to die out by the time they get this far south(same latitude as Miami). When a deep freeze(1983,85,89) comes, Deep South Texas is about equivalent to Central Florida.
I find it amazing that the cold fronts can reach that far south in the first place... I guess it goes to show the power of arctic air even if the freezing weather only lasts a matter of hours.
I agree, the Palms in the NYC area (usually Windmill Palms) have no choice but to endure below 32 degree weather. The average Winter low is about 30 F (usually early morning hours) but it "warms up" into the 40's during the day.
Yeah, I imagine NYC overall grows palms better than here because you guys get the summer heat which we don't have. Many palms of course thrive on this
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