I mentioned earlier today that my friend Jan Null, former lead forecaster for the NWS in San Francisco and now operator of Golden Gate Weather Service pointed out that a number of cold records were set overnight. Looks like we are in for a second night, and it looks even colder for some areas. Napa’s wine valley may hit 26-27 tonight. 2011 may not be a good year for wine then. We’ll see. Other grape growing areas in coastal valleys will also be affected:
Here’s the official record reports:
SXUS76 KMTR 270037 CCA
RERMTR
RECORD EVENT REPORT
NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE SAN FRANCISCO BAY AREA
430 PM PST SAT FEB 26 2011
THE FOLLOWING SITES SET A NEW RECORD LOW TEMPERATURE FOR THIS DATE
LOW PREVIOUS YEAR OF
SITE TEMPERATURE RECORD PREVIOUS RECORD
NAPA 28 30 1945 CORRECTED
OAKLAND 34 38 1987
OAKLAND INTL ARPT 32 34 1962
SFO INTL ARPT 35 36 1971
SAN RAFAEL 28 32 1996
THE FOLLOWING SITES TIED PREVIOUS RECORD LOW TEMPERATURES
LOW YEAR OF
SITE TEMPERATURE PREVIOUS RECORD
SAN FRANCISCO 37 1962
MOUNTAIN VIEW 34 1962
SAN JOSE 33 1897
Here’s the forecast for Saint Helena in the center of the Napa Valley tonight, they call for 26 degrees.
Growing areas near Salinas will also get a frost.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Ice wine is made when grapes freeze in Autumn before getting picked. No wine is made when blooms from an early warm spell, fall off in a subsequent early freeze.
Winter wheat in Pendleton is under the same warning. An earlier warm spell in the NE plains of Oregon wheat country caused red wheat planted in the fall to come up earlier than usual. But now those fairly tall green shoots are freezing their little blades off. Winter red wheat is the prized bread and cake flour that often is the source of flour prices increasing substantially following bad growing years.
If you like to bake, buy up the big sacks of baking flour and store them in a cool, dry location with good air circulation.
The greatest snowfall recorded in downtown Los Angeles was 2 inches (5 cm) in 1932.
That would be ‘1816 and froze to death‘ for $100 Alex.
Lots of anecdotal corroboration from farmers in the Northeast USA to Mary Shelley in Switzerland writing her Frankenstein.
Please also note that our last two summers: 2009 and 2010 were nothing to write home about. Just add in a Tambora scale eruption and we’d really be in deep {self-snip} cold. On the bright side, the AGW cult would be jumping out the windows of their Ivory Towers and landing on streets and automobiles, just like the polar bears they used in one of their sicko commercials.
I should note that Arctic Oscillation does not make me angry – I apologize for changing directions without using a turn signal.
I think some of you are getting the seasons mixed up. Icewine is not the result of freezing temps in the spring. Grapes destined for the production of Icewine are left on the vine way past normal picking time in the fall. They begin to shrivel. Then when the temp drops to -8C the remaining water in the grape freezes. Then the concentrated juice is extracted after crushing and used to produce the Icewine. But maybe if this global ‘cooling’ continues California will be picking Icewine grapes this year.
If Napa Valley fails to produce good wine this year and North Korea starts a war to compensate for crop failures, then we can all blame it on LACK of global warming.
It has been amazingly cold up here in Montana for this late in the winter: http://billingsgazette.com/news/local/article_8982ea7c-3158-57d8-8734-b99038b6e5b0.html Note that Cut Bank sank to -35, and Miles City broke the old record low by 11 degrees and only got up to -7 Fahrenheit for the day’s high.
From Pamela Gray on February 27, 2011 at 8:02 am:
We were long ago invaded by tiny common household beetles that like flour and other dry products. I found a listing of the usual suspects:
BUGS In Your Cupboards
http://www.ag.ndsu.edu/pubs/yf/home/e300w.htm
Some years back, some guy on the one blog was freaking out after finding the little crunchy specks in some plastic bags of pricey spices, moaning about tossing them out with a lot of other stuff and figuring out how to keep them out. I, along with others, consoled him to not worry about the added bits of protein, you likely won’t notice them in the finished product, you don’t notice them now (processed foods are allowed a certain tiny percentage of insect parts, the critters are very pervasive).
Sealed containers are recommended for storing flour and similar, as they will easily penetrate the common paper flour bag. Our experience is they will chew into plastic bags, enter at tiny spaces along the lids of regular metal countertop containers, etc. Thus dry products from flour to instant potatoes to Bisquick get stored in the freezer on the door shelves (plastic, no ice buildup).
For long-term storage of large amounts, I’d recommend transferring to sturdy plastic containers with tight lids. While they can be bought, our modern throw-away lifestyle provides plenty that are suitable, look for threaded lids. If you’re not squeamish, cat litter comes in jugs ideal for dry good storage, look for unscented as the perfumes may contaminate the plastic.
kadaka,
Good advice. For long term storage you can also buy some dry ice to put on top of the flour or grain before putting the cover on loosely. It doesn’t take much dry ice. Let the dry ice almost sublimate completely, then seal the lid. Nothing will oxidize, and any critters and eggs will suffocate.
Mike McMillan says: February 26, 2011 at 10:06 pm @ur momisugly tokyoboy
“Where is that chart you put up a while back of Japan Tide gauges, kudasai?”
You mean this one (released by our MET)? Sorry in Japanese, but the graphs/charts may be clear:
http://www.data.kishou.go.jp/shindan/a_1/sl_trend/sl_trend.html
The top chart is an average of 4 sites (1906-59) and 16 sites (1960-2010), which exhibit little ground deformation (so says MET).
Our MET says “there’s no long-term trend. A 20-year oscillation is evident.”
It’s been very hot over here in Perth, Australia.
Long hot summer nights bring new record
Perth has broken its record for the greatest number of consecutive warm nights.
The minimum overnight temperature for the Perth metropolitan area has remained above 20 degrees for 14 consecutive nights, breaking the last record set in 1990.
There have also been 21 consecutive days of temperatures over 30 degrees.
http://www.weatherzone.com.au/news/long-hot-summer-nights-bring-new-record/16645
—————
Perth enduring second hottest summer on record
Perth has been sweltering in its hottest summer in 33 years and second hottest summer in more than 110 years of records, according to weatherzone.com.au.
“It’s virtually a certainty with the rest of the month staying well above 20 degrees at night and rising to the mid 30s every day,” weatherzone meteorologist Brett Dutschke said.
The summer maximum will average at just under 32 degrees, about two degrees hotter than the long-term norm and the highest in 33 years.
The summer average minimum will turn out to be 19 degrees, one and a half degrees warmer than the long-term norm and the highest in 19 years.
Combining nighttime minimums and daytime maximums, the average temperature will come out at 25.4 degrees, the highest since the summer of 1977/1978 and second highest on record.
http://www.weatherzone.com.au/news/perth-enduring-second-hottest-summer-on-record/16609
tokyoboy says: February 27, 2011 at 4:39 pm
. . .
http://www.data.kishou.go.jp/shindan/a_1/sl_trend/sl_trend.html
Exactly the tide chart I was looking for. It matches the satellite data well, and looks like we may see a decline in sea level in the future if the trend continues.
Arigato gozaimasu.
There was no bud break in the central coast / Paso Robles region prior to the cold snap ( I have direct contacts in the business there that I checked with) so I would doubt that Napa / Sonoma had any bud break either – in which case the cold / snow would not have any effect of the grapes at this point.
Now, that’s not to say we wont have other weather events that will effect this years crop before it is harvested….