The winter that wasn’t
Pleasant temperatures could give way to powerful storms
What feels like the early onset of spring may be a welcome opportunity to enjoy unseasonable T-shirt weather, but the unusual temperatures also might bring dire consequences for the region.
With an average temperature of 50.9 degrees, this February was the seventh warmest on record, according to data from the National Weather Service. January wasn’t far behind, coming in at the ninth warmest on record with an average of 49.1 degrees.
One of the first causes for concern was seen, and felt, Wednesday when a storm system blew through the region, damaging several Chattanooga homes. That may have been a harbinger of more severe weather to come, said Jeremy Buckles, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Morristown, Tenn.
“Our severe weather season for this area is mainly March through May. That’s kind of our prime severe weather and tornado season,” Buckles said. “We obviously have seen a quick start to this severe weather season.”
He said the warm weather systems that cut winter short could set the stage for
“If we don’t get our rain in the winter and the spring, we’re in trouble in the summer and the fall, because that’s our dry time of the year.”
– PAUL BARYS, METEOROLOGIST
more dangerous storms over the coming weeks as the warm air clashes with colder systems from the north.
“We’re at least anticipating more severe weather over the season. We’ll definitely be watching closely for that,” he said.
Even without the threat of potential tornadoes, persistently warm temperatures have already started to impact the lives of some in tangible ways.
Sara McIntyre, executive director of Crabtree Farms in Chattanooga, said the early spring has huge implications for local food producers.
She said farmers are already seeing signs of stress in their plants, making them more susceptible to insects and disease, and if the problem continues, it could hobble their growing operations.
“By having an early spring like this, we’re not only investing a lot of time and a lot of money into putting plants in the ground, they might fail sooner than we would like and leave us in a lurch, so we now would have a second thin season,” she said. “With increased stress, the plant equivalent of their immune system is decreased. Same thing that happens with humans.”
Because their plants are more vulnerable, McIntyre and other farmers will have to go to extreme lengths to protect what they can manage to grow in a shortened period of a normal growing season for cool- weather crops, including kale, cabbage and broccoli.
McIntyre said they’ve started introducing ladybug larvae and are looking to spray plants with water mixed with hot chili peppers to make them less appetizing for insects that didn’t die like they usually do in a cold winter. But even that might not be enough.
“You may not get spinach at all this year,” she said.
That could mean the local food chain has to rely on outside sources to provide vegetables, which McIntyre said would mean higher prices for consumers.
As if fungal diseases and swarms of ravenous insects weren’t troubling enough, McIntyre said, the warm weather also leads to plants “bolting,” or flowering prematurely, making them almost inedible.
“When they flower, they change their physiology,” she said. “If you eat lettuce, it should be sweet and taste slightly of dirt. When you eat bolted lettuce, it tastes like the most bitter pill you’ve ever had. It is a huge flavor difference.”
A mild winter also had implications for the annual Ice on the Landing, which a manager said took a hit with temperatures in the 70s.
The equipment used to keep the ice skating rink frozen is more than enough to keep the ice cold when the mercury rises, said Carla Pritchard, the owner of Chattanooga Presents, but the warm temps still might have kept skaters away.
“The hard part for us is at the very front end when we’re trying to create the ice and freeze that surface. It was a little warm for us even trying to start this season, so we had to have some of our employees work all night overnight when the temperatures were dropping,” she said.
“It would have a glossy look to it on those super warm days, but [ it was] always skateable.”
That wasn’t clear to many of the customers she said called in to make sure the rink was actually usable between Thanksgiving and January.
“A lot of people thought that we might not be open during those 75- degree days,” she said. “We can only assume that we might have lost some business based on what people might have been thinking.”
The high temperatures present one set of issues, but meteorologists also are keeping an eye on precipitation levels with the memory of last year’s extreme drought fresh on the mind.
Paul Barys, chief meteorologist for WRCB-TV Channel 3, said he is less concerned with the temperature than he is rainfall.
Chattanooga finished almost 17 inches below its usual annual rainfall in 2016 and is already behind another 1.3 inches in 2017.
“If we don’t get our rain in the winter and the spring, we’re in trouble in the summer and the fall, because that’s our dry time of the year,” he said.
“You saw what happened last year — in the spring it started drying up really fast and summer was negligible as far as rain goes and so was autumn,” he said. “That’s why we were in such big trouble, and nobody wants to see those wildfires like that.”