Record warmth could be disaster for Northern fruit growers

February’s record warmth across the U.S. means several weeks of worry for fruit growers in the Midwest and Northeast as trees flower early, leaving them vulnerable to a hard freeze that could sweep in and kill them all.

Spring-like temperatures have come early to the eastern U.S., restricting maple syrup sap harvests and waking up apple, cherry and peach trees from Michigan to New Jersey and New York.

But there’s still a lot of cold air in Canada and northern New England lingering not far from many orchards. Long-term averages show flower-destroying freezing temperatures can still strike from late April to mid-May in most areas. And without the flowers, the trees bear no fruit.

“Fruit growers are afraid the crops are developing too early and will get hit with a freeze,” said Mark Longstroth, extension fruit educator at Michigan State University in Paw Paw. “Everyone would be happy if we had some cooler temperatures to slow down development.”

As of Wednesday, 6,096 new daily high temperature records were set over the last 30 days across the U.S., according to the National Centers for Environmental Information in Asheville, North Carolina. In addition, there were 5,174 record warm low temperatures as well.

In stark contrast, over the same period, just 350 cold records were set.

All-time highs for February were set in Boston, Milwaukee, Columbus, Ohio, and Binghamton, New York, where readings reached into the 70s Fahrenheit, said Tom Di Liberto, a meteorologist with the U.S. Climate Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland.

“The records that were broken were not just daily records, but monthly records,” Di Liberto said. “Burlington, Vermont, broke the record twice in 48 hours, breaking it the second time by 9 degrees. A 70-degree day in Vermont is quite unusual.”

Burlington is 45 miles south of the Canadian border.

The warmth had a number of sources. One is that sea-surface temperatures in the western Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico are higher than normal. There were also more winds from the south to push the heat north. February temperatures in the U.S. have risen by 0.3 degrees per decade since 1895, Di Liberto said.