https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e1U7CrqX074Dr Jonathan Crane sent out this link this evening ,video for cold prep.
To: Tropical Fruit Growers
It may get cold/freeze Friday night/Saturday morning and/or Saturday night/Sunday morning. Here is a link [Freeze Protection of Tropical Fruit crops in Florida - Dr. Jonathan Crane - YouTube] to our videos on protecting tropical fruit trees from freeze events (in Miami-Dade County and outside Miami-Dade County). To help prepare right now (called pre-freeze irrigation) – run your irrigation systems for a few hours (2-3) to get the soil wet – the wet soil will absorb the sunlight Thursday and Friday/Saturday and re-radiate the stored heat back into the grove at night. Note: It’ll be too late for the pre-freeze irrigation if we get windy by Friday – why? Because the wind will cause evaporative cooling and make the environment cooler.
National Weather Service (NWS) has forecast 36F for south Florida (Miami-Dade Co.) on Jan. 29-31 (Saturday night/Monday morning). However, it may get colder than that because their temperature predictions are from urban/airport areas and there will be at least two days of low temperatures (usually colder the second night). If you look at the forecast map (
https://www.weather.gov/forecastmaps) you’ll see the high (H) pressure systems to our north, north-west and lows (L) to the south and southeast are setting us up for a cold air mass to move SE into the Florida peninsula (Fig. 1). If you click on the Short Range Forecasts you’ll note some details and potential weather for south Florida (e.g., Friday, clear but cold/ice potential along our coast and then Sat., likely chance of rain).