| Author | Message | ||
     Etennuly |
Here in East Tennessee we have had the coldest winter I have seen in all of the near twenty years I have been here. Last week followed it up with record high temperatures. Into the low eighties even. No complaint here about being warm! Motorcycle season!! This does create a problem though. All of our trees get duped into thinking it is spring.our last hard freeze is usually early March. We can generally assume no more frost by the third week of March I always have likened it to someone finally paid the heat bill so that the Sun's power switch got turned back on. And it usually happens that fast here. One day jeans and jackets, the next shorts and T shirts, and it stays above 70 just like that. The problem is if we get that last hard freeze it kills the buds that have so bravely popped out(or foolishly). We have a lot of beautiful trees that we have planted on our land that a few different years This has happened. It sucks to see otherwise beautiful cherry, willow, maple, birch, apple, pear, peach and oak trees look like they are a pile of standing sticks. Some will come back to a half growth of leaves by the end of May or so. I have a question about this event towards what I have heard and been taught about tree growth rings. Would this leaf bud die off not make for a small growth ring in what otherwise could be a productive year? I learned early on that scientists look to growth rings on trees to study annual historical weather events and seasonal weather. Would this not skew their findings? | ||
| Strokizator |
You may be on to something. Most information I've learned on tree rings is used to indicate whether it was a dry year or wet year. Obviously there are other influencing factors. OK, where's Patrick when you need him? | ||
| Shoggin |
Al Gore could tell you all about it!  | ||
| Sifo |
Tree rings can tell you about a lot of things. Sort of. Temperature, water, soil nutrition, aerial fertilization (atmospheric CO2), etc. I've never heard of issues with an early frost being an issue. I don't think you would get a double tree ring if that's what you are thinking. At least, I've never heard of that. I would certainly expect a smaller growth ring though due to the tree putting energy into budding twice. That certainly slows growth for a number of reasons. I think it would be an accurate measure of growth that season though. How that gets interpreted when someone examines the rings is the rub. | ||
| Aesquire |
What he said. Besides, it's the hottest year on record. | ||
| 86129squids |
I've been outside most of the day, inside working on notes for a neighborhood meeting now. Dangit if I won't have to mow the grass soon! Plus, weeding, sowing new grass seed (got a start on that, yay), raking last year's crappy leaves, fixing my tiller in order to get the garden started, de-junking the corner next to my shed, clear my gutters, another coat of deck paint, another wood treatment for the shed, power wash the front porch...  With all the extra nice weather we've had here in E TN, the dang weather folks are yakking "Blizzard 1993!!!" like Chicken Little or something. F them. They'd ruin a wet dream. I love spring, but dang if I don't have a shit-ton of stuff to do. We're sprouting the garden now, in the not too distant future I gotta get ready to plant. Maybe I'll get time to ride...  | ||
| Aesquire |
For me Spring is flooded yard. Which works out. We've got a few more months of winter.  I won't ride until there's been at least two serious rains after they quit salting. Right now there are salt drifts everywhere and riding is hazardous as well as corrosive. I also can't get the Cyclone out of the shed until it dries out a bit more. Today the bike would sink past the rims and I couldn't push it to dry ground. No big deal since March is still winter and it will snow again. I can't mow until it dries, either, or the tractor gets stuck, but worse, I'll rut up the yard, badly. For me it's patient waiting. | ||
| Strokizator |
The bay here is still frozen 2ft thick and a daggone goose just showed up waiting for his mate to arrive (geese mate for life but apparently take separate vacations). Considering the problems they gave me last year, I just may sneak out there and nip this in the bud. | ||
| Ebutch |
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| Etennuly |
It wasn't a double ring for a season that I was thinking about, but rather a very small one based on the fact that when the buds freeze off they do not come back nearly as strong. The trees end up with less than half the leaf count and sometimes the leaves are half size. This, in what could be a great long warm, wet summer with scant leaves. I would think that this would leave a narrow or thin ring as if it had been a bad year. | ||
| Ebutch |
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| 86129squids |
Hey Butch- I know it's fun to paste stuff, and you're good at it. I guffaw at lots of it. You're already well established in the meme section. Qwerty. | ||
| Ebutch |
I use pics to answer ok? (Message edited by ebutch on February 27, 2018) | ||
| Etennuly |
For eons when an old tree was cut down, basic science had always considered that counting the rings would determine the age of the tree. Then measuring the thickness of each ring was the determining factor for the weather the tree had endured for each given year. My question is could a two day spring freeze in an otherwise fantastic weather year, give a narrow growth band that would throw a wrench into the old scientific method? This given that it has happened at least six of the nineteen years I have been in the area. I'm sure nowadays the experts take a lot of other historical factors into consideration. But the ring count measurement used on fossilized wood is still used to decipher what the weather was like over a given period. | ||
| Court |
All I know is that it is going to be a gorgeous spring and summer here in the Hudson Valley . . . I'm loving that I have to spend the day flying today and it's going to be near 60! Hooray ! | ||
| Sifo |
The trees end up with less than half the leaf count and sometimes the leaves are half size. This, in what could be a great long warm, wet summer with scant leaves. I would think that this would leave a narrow or thin ring as if it had been a bad year. I think you've got a good grasp on how this works. The question of if it would throw off analysis of the rings is interesting. I suppose it would largely depend on if these false spring events were, on average, altered by what you are trying to analyze with tree rings. Or for that matter, if false spring events were, on average, altered by anything else. Climate studies are very chaotic. Skunks are getting run over like crazy this week around here. It's a sure sign of spring! I can see parts of my lawn again. It's nice being able to see the pavement on the roads again. Snow is still in the forecast though. | ||
| 86129squids |
What Court said! All my plants are coming up, even two of the three cherry tree seedlings I transplanted right before winter. Dreading the yardwork though... my best buddy lives on a houseboat. I gets jealous sometimes when I go visit. | ||
| Etennuly |
••••••• lady bug beetles! At least the stink bug population is down so far. | ||
| Fast1075 |
The smell of orange blossoms is so strong today, one of the ladies at work had an allergy attack. I expect my first crop of habs in two weeks. My plants are covered in small peppers. My tomatoes are in bloom. Chocolate stripe variety this year, and I just started my seedlings for Cayenne and Thai giant hybrids. Gonna be a spicy, juicy summer. Cold front coming this weekend, down to 50 on Sunday. Giant black fart bugs are starting to swarm on the highways. Soon to migrate to Daytona for bike week. Saw my first love bug of the season yesterday, but they are not due in force till next new moon. | ||
| Etennuly |
Sure don't miss the stinky paint eating mush meal splattered on my vehicles from those Fla stink bugs. My last meeting with them was on my Uly about nine years ago. Aaccckkkk! Ended in a car wash hanging all my gear for the soapy pressure wash. Nasty! | ||
| 86129squids |
Didn't that cause the BAW? Starting to see the random stink bug invaders... go grab the hand vacuum... meh. Just put out a suet cake crusted with scorpion and cayenne pepper, hoping to see the squirrel who's mowing through my suet... think I made my woodpecker sneeze though. Whoops. | ||
| Etennuly |
Secondary cause and motivation for sure, mostly the BAW was to fight off cold year-round riding woes. | ||
| Etennuly |
So here comes this weekend.....two nights below freezing. Willow tree, cherry, and silver maples are beyond bloom into immature leaves. The trees are too big to cover. Most are too far out to set up sprinklers. Stupid trees! | ||
| 86129squids |
Dammit!!! This weather of late has been hella-wacky... my sis in Little Rock has been looking for Noah's Ark to float by. My sweetie and her BF are in Tunica until tomorrow, she said the cel phones there have been blowing up with flood warnings, got them around here too. | ||
| Aesquire |
Snow storm with power outages predicted tonight. Minor flooding this weekend. Asteroid strike uncertain. | ||
| Ratbuell |
Wind and outages predicted here tonight as well. I think the ring question is more seasonal growth / moisture based. If you think of what makes a "hardwood" versus a "soft wood", the hardwoods grow at a slower rate, i.e. more densely packed cells. Fast growth ends up being a softer wood because there's less material in there, and more fluid/vascular space. Big rings = fast growth season, which would come from lots of moisture and good temps. I'm sure a flash-freeze could affect overall ring size, but if we get a kick-ass growing season after the flash freeze all bets would be off as far as growth rate. | ||
| Sifo |
I'm sure a flash-freeze could affect overall ring size, but if we get a kick-ass growing season after the flash freeze all bets would be off as far as growth rate. The problem is that trees put a lot of energy into developing leaves in the spring. When they lose that first batch of leaves, they have to expend that energy a second time, and usually fail to produce good foliage. Now they are really behind on things from not being able to gather sunlight during the growing season. It really stresses a tree for the entire season. Pests like tent worms can cause the same sort of issue. | ||
| Airbozo |
Two years in a row, my plum trees have bloomed before the last hard rains and final freeze. When I get home tonight, I expect to see all the blossoms on the ground from being pummeled off the tree. At least I won't have to waste my time fighting the squirrels for the plums. Last year I bought one of these to keep the squirrels away: https://www.amazon.com/Gardeneer-Dalen-Natural-Sca recrow-Action/dp/B005J24R26 To my surprise, it worked pretty well. Even the blue jays hate it. | ||
| Etennuly |
Well last weekend's freezing temperatures did not go as low as predicted. The weather people have become such drama queens. Any and every weather event, from a fart to an F5 tornado is sensationalized to promote and benefit the weather reporter more so than to help their audience. This coming weekend is now supposed to dip to the mid twenties. Idiots give me weather alerts on my phone every day,even when the sun is shining to tell me to put on Sun screen. Idiots tell me how to dress rather than what the weather will be. Idiots tell me the "feels like" temperature rather than real temperature. Idiots sensationalized a temperature dip to get ratings rather than accuracy. Idiots got stuff to sell. | ||
| Etennuly |
I mowed the yard over last weekend. Those smaller trees that had buds go to leaves lost their first round Then second buds came out last week. Now they are going to suffer another mid twenties freeze this am. The one that annoys me most is a beautiful weeping willow that i planted sixteen years ago. Poor bastard will suffer again this year being a stick bush with little green leaves. It was in full early leaves last week. Tree rings aside , i hate when this happens ! |
