Freezing

[tstep]

Birds could skate in the bird bath again. May 19 enough is enough!!

[grassfarmer]

How low did it go in southern Manitoba?
Braveheart or anyone else with actual temperatures from overnight? A bit concerned about the crops we seeded there but haven't heard any actual overnight temperatures yet.
Positively warming up here in AB - we were only -2.3C overnight versus -7.5C this time last week.

[foragefarmer]

Grassfarmer

looks like -1 to -2 in most of southern Mb.

[Klause]

Grassfarmer check out manitoba Tgs for local graphs from government weather stations.

I think the URL is Tgs.gov.mb.ca

[stonepicker]

-3 here last night, same the night before. 16 hrs. below zero sun. night, about 11hrs. last night. But miracle of miracles it looks like the canola will survive! we'll see in 2 more days. i'm guessing that being saturated with rain and snow saved us.

[grassfarmer]

Thanks klause that is a useful site. Doesn't seem anyone got the -6 or -7C they were predicting? Hopefully the -1 to -3C won't do a lot of damage.

[Braveheart]

Grassfarmer, air temperature at 5:30 am was -0.8C. We have a thermometer at ground level that records overnight lows. It recorded 0.8 on the plus side. Our farm is quite a bit higher elevation than yours so you might have been a bit colder.

[Braveheart]

Our established alfalfa is more beat up by the sleet storm than any low temps.

[Jay-mo]

Overnight low was -2.3
Canola that is up looked great this afternoon at 4pm.

[farmaholic]

How the hell that canola "looks to have survived" Sunday night /Monday morning is beyond me. We had a cheap thermometer laying on the ground that registered about minus six and the Davis weather station in the yard (about 10 feet off the ground) registered minus four. Frost for a long period too. Drill ridges were froze "firm" compared to that same field I walked on tonight. Just poking out to early cotyledon stage.... hard to believe. Got to do more digging though.

Any thoughts?

Furrow, I like your ten pin flag idea, very good idea and tip.

[Braveheart]

Jay-mo, you're also several hundred feet lower than we are, hence the lower temps. You're still higher than Grassfarmer's farm.

I think it's too early to assess any damage. We need time to see damage and then be patient on recovery.

[farmaholic]

Brave, not too many turned dark green. They "look" fine. Maybe I'm jumping the gun. Today was quite dry here, low relative humidity, they don't seem to be wilting. Freezing at this stage is new territory for me, we had canola freeze that had true leaves though. ...

[furrowtickler]

Generally frozen canola at the cot stage or beyond 2 leaf it is resilient . It's inbetween that has not been 'weathered ' dies

[grassfarmer]

Surely it is more complicated than simple elevation Braveheart? Mountains generally get colder the further up you get not warmer. We are at 3000' here compared to you at @1800? yet we get way more frost. At Belmont we will be half the elevation of here but still 3 times the elevation we were in the hills of Scotland.
Distance from the mountain ranges, coasts, presence of other warming or cooling factors (rivers/lakes etc) must all factor in.

[SASKFARMER3]

If your dry, or cold dry soil, frost damage can be more severe. If it warms up the flee beetles will thrive. Even if you used lumiderm and all you have left is the centre growing point you to will have issues. They need to eat leaf material the only thing green is the centre growing point. Dry frost or wet frost. This years most were a dry cold frost. 3 to 5 days will tell the tail. Been their done that. Some times being the first out of the gate doesn't work. That's farming. But this year definitely the weather pattern is back to the old normal cycle.