Midwest and Eastern Vineyards Hit by Historic Snow and Freeze Events - Electroverse
Crop Loss Extreme Weather GSM
MIDWEST AND EASTERN VINEYARDS HIT BY HISTORIC SNOW AND FREEZE EVENTS
APRIL 27, 2021 CAP ALLON
North America’s deadly February freeze has been followed by a brutal late-April Arctic blast. The result has been millions of dollars worth of damage to key growing regions up and down the U.S., not least the nation’s vineyards.
Last week, a severe frost event delivered thousands of record-breaking low temperatures to the majority of the CONUS; and as a result, vineyards from North Texas and the High Plains to Missouri, from Michigan to New York and Pennsylvania have ALL suffered substantial losses.
'Devastating Terra Firma Broiling' --as I like to call it-- now constitutes EVERY WEATHER EVENT KNOWN TO MAN, even record spring cold.
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Hardest hit were those vineyards in Missouri and Ohio, reports
winebusiness.com.
According to Dr. Dean Volenberg, director of the Grape and Wine Institute at the University of Missouri, there was widespread damage because many of the grapes were ‘post bud swell,’ and there were not one, but two nights in a row of record-breaking freezing weather.
One grower north of Columbia told Volenberg that his Marechal Foch was post bud break and temperatures had dropped to 24F (-4.4C). Another grower in Macon County reported a historic April low of 21F (-6.1C). Needless to say, buds that have ‘broken’ (awoken from their winter dormancy) cannot survive such extremely low temps.
A frosted shoot during the freeze event on April 21-22 in Missouri. Credit: Dean Volenberg
Gene Sigel, vineyard manager at Debonné Vineyards in Madison, Ohio, told Wine Business Monthly that NE Ohio received as much as foot of
snow on Tuesday April 20, adding that nighttime temperatures plunged to 28F (-2.2C). “Many vineyards [in the region] have wind machines, but we’re not prepared to use them when there’s snow on the ground,” said Sigel. “It was really atypical to have that much snow and be cold so long. Buds froze solid — they crumble in your fingers.”
Worryingly, the prevalence of these late-season freezes appears to be increasing.
North American growers suffered a similarly severe frost event around the same time last year, on April 18, 2020. Volenberg noted that growers, especially at the larger wineries, left 30% more buds than normal when pruning this year because of the low production after last year’s freeze.
These record low temperatures are proving a serious setback to the likes of peach and cherry orchards, too — these trees are in full bloom at this time of year, and it doesn’t take much to ruin an entire year’s harvest.
Growers up and down the United States are keeping their fingers crossed that the worst of the freeze is over.
Steve Shepard, winemaker and general manager of RayLen Vineyards and Winery in Mocksville, North Carolina, is hoping his region doesn’t get another frost in April, adding that by May 1, “We’re 95 percent out of the woods.”
We’ll see Shepard — mid-range models aren’t looking too favorable, mixed at best. They’re currently showing a strong possibility of further
polar outbreaks into the second week of May, particularly for northern, central and eastern regions:
And please note, you can longer trust any forecast released by the likes of NOAA — the agency’s bias is skewed to warmth, and has been for years now. Just take a look at their April forecast (shown below), issued March 31. It shows no sign of the April freeze that blasted the country April 19 to April 26 — quite the opposite, NOAA’s official prediction called for “
lots of warmth.”
The story is the repeated if you look back to February.
As late as Jan. 22, NOAA told the American people the month would turn out “comfortably above average”:
NOAA forecast for Feb, 2021.
But as we know, the United States wound-up suffering its coldest February in more than 30 years:
The REALITY for Feb, 2021.
There are agendas at play here.
Heat is a business, and even the mere forecasting of above average temperatures is enough to keep the global warming narrative alive — the lie is preserved, t
he damage is done, regardless of what the reality actually delivers.
“Some growers will get lucky,” concluded Volenberg regarding last week’s record-breaking freeze, but for many, “there will be widespread damage.”
TODAY’S OTHER ARTICLES:
The majority of Europe is set on for an extreme May freeze with heavy snow forecast for Scandinavia, the Alps, Germany, and even the UK.
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"Seldom is the public ever informed of these glaring discrepancies between basic science and what politicians and pop-scientists tell us," writes Dr. Roy Spencer. "There is no Climate Emergency."
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The
COLD TIMES are returning, the mid-latitudes are
REFREEZING, in line with
the great conjunction,
historically low solar activity,
cloud-nucleating Cosmic Rays, and a
meridional jet stream flow (among other forcings).
Both NOAA and NASA appear to agree,
if you read between the lines, with NOAA saying we’re entering a
‘full-blown’ Grand Solar Minimum in the late-2020s, and NASA seeing this upcoming solar cycle
(25) as “
the weakest of the past 200 years”, with the agency correlating previous solar shutdowns to prolonged periods of global cooling
here.
Furthermore, we can’t ignore the slew of new scientific papers stating the immense impact
The Beaufort Gyre could have on the Gulf Stream, and therefore the climate overall.
Prepare accordingly—
learn the facts, relocate if need be, and grow your own.