Winter Weather

[Roma]

Nobody has mentioned the weather for a while.  I couldn't find the thread.
We had snow here yesterday but it's all gone today

[Margaret]

Lovely photos, Roma.

We've had lots of rain and a dramatic hail storm today.  Salvia Wendy's Wish and the Strobilanthes were flowering on the 19th Nov but got smashed today.

[angie]

Nobody has mentioned the weather for a while.  I couldn't find the thread.
We had snow here yesterday but it's all gone today

Lovely pictures Roma, not like us folks in the UK not to talk about the weather 

Angie 

[Ed Alverson]

Here in the southern Willamette Valley (normally Zone we are just now coming out of the most severe spell of winter weather in over 40 years. Temperatures did not get above freezing for 7 days, and we had 7 inches of snow last Friday. There have been six nights/mornings in a row with temperatures below 12 degrees F (-11 deg. C), and two nights below 0. At the airport, the coldest morning was Sunday, when -10 degrees F was recorded, only 2 degrees off the all-time record. The airport is in a bit of a cold pocket, at my house I "only" recorded -3. Pretty extreme for an area where most years the coldest temps are in the teens. The snow was lovely, and with snow covering all of my pots and troughs, so many of my plants will be fine, but my Zone 8 trees and shrubs may be goners. My 25 ft. tall Michelia wilsonii (normally evergreen) has turned brown, I expect the leaves to all fall off, I can only hope that I'll get epicormic branching from the trunk to replace all of the lost twigs. Cinnamomum wilsonii looks better, the leaves are mostly green with some blotchiness, maybe I have hope there. My Garrya elliptica was damaged when young by upper single digit cold, it looks ok now so maybe the maturity of the plants will help. If not, I can always cut them to the ground and hope that they re-sprout...

Ed

[François Lambert]

I don't have to complain about winter weather in Belgium.  We have some mild frosts at night only, December has already given us more than the average monthly number of sunshine hours 

And there are still many dandelions flowering right now.  I cant' remember ever to have seen these plants flowering so late in the year - and I'm 48 years old already 

Last week-end, at the warmest time of the day I have even spotted some bumblebees flying around !  Thought they normally should be hybernating at this time of the year ...

[David Nicholson]

Blowing an absolute gale here, just retrieved our wheelie-bin from the bottom of the road (along with a dozen or so others) and don't think I'll bother retrieving the shreds of my first lost fence panel of the Winter from next doors garden.

[Roma]

Very windy here last night.  7 panes of glass out of the greenhouse.  I spent ages on knees picking up the small slivers of glass in the grass.  Some bits had flown quite far before hitting the ground and shattering.  I think there are still bits lurking among the pots in the greenhouse.  My husband managed to replace the one on the side but he's not very fit to reach up to the ones on the roof but he'll try.  I have some bits of bubble plastic I used to line an 8 by 12 greenhouse a long time ago so have put that over the plants under the holes in case it rains.  Temperature is not supposed to drop below zero in the next few days so hopefully I can get someone to fix the roof before it does.

[angie]

Hi Roma, same here I thought I would wake up to a tree or two down behind the house. I watched as the trees bended in the moonlight, just pleased to see them bend away from the greenhouse. Only damage was the lantern on the lamppost. It fell near the car. If I can help with your greenhouse give me a shout.  Lets hope thats the last of these gales.

Angie 

[johnralphcarpenter]

Big storm last night, worse than St Judes. Blew away the mini polytunnels over the species Tulips. Other minor damage; we will need two new fence panels. Now need to re-batten the hatches before the next one, due Friday. Sigh!

[Maggi Young]

Winter storm damage reports from Eastern USA and Canada inthe last day or so and they're waiting for another hit ..... UK being blown around and so is a large part of Europe -  Merry Christmas everyone!

[johnw]

Maggi - Parts of the Annapolis Valley, especially the Fundy shore were hit here and some are still without power as the temperatures drop.  We missed it here on the Atlantic coast but southern New Brunswick was badly affected and I believe 45,000 are still powerless.  Maggiepie should have received snow instead.

Toronto to Kingston were clobbered and the temperatures are in the minus teens celsius. Hundreds of thousands without power.  The elderly living alone are a bit worry there, freezing and no getting out of the high-rises.

johnw

[Maggi Young]

So many problems, John - hope the storm passes more quickly than is forecast  but it'll still  be a long job repairing the power lines and so on .

[Yann]

It was very windy (77mph stated on the greenhouse's ridge), Friday forecast are bad with a similar scenario.

[Michael J Campbell]

Very vicious storm here last night but no damage that I can see,lots of trees down in the neighbourhood though and 70,000 people with no electricity. I was up most of the night wondering if we would survive until morning and listening for glass breaking, thankfully all is well. 

[ashley]

Electricity back here within the last hour. 
The only real damage was a eucalyptus blown down, which is now in the wood shed. 
A new planting opportunity for the New Year