Low temperatures in the Finger Lakes dropped below freezing in many locations over the past couple of mornings, especially today (Friday, April 26). Temperatures on Thursday morning, April 25, didn’t get as cold as this morning, but some spots slipped below freezing for a few hours on both days. The lowest temperatures occurred around 5:00 – 6:00 AM this morning (highlighted rows in the table below), dropping down as low as about 23°F at Dundee.
This obviously isn’t great news due to the fact that buds in many locations have started to come out of dormancy and are at various stages of budswell or even budbreak (we called budbreak in our earliest varieties, Marquette and Jupiter, a couple of days ago). The silver lining at this point is that we aren’t nearly as advanced as we were on May 18 last year, so bud injury should be much less than that event. It would still be a very good idea to get out over the next couple of days to start assessing what levels of damage might have occurred, especially in earlier developing varieties. The FLGP team will be out over the next several days to try to get a sense of how buds came through these last couple of days, but we would also appreciate hearing from growers about their initial assessments from their own vineyards as well.
Hourly temperatures (°F) at several FLX NEWA stations from 12:00 – 8:00 AM on April 25 & April 26.
| Branchport | Dresden | Dundee | Geneva | Hammondsport | Interlaken | Lodi | Williamson | |
| 4/25 0:00 | 33.6 | 35.8 | 33.4 | 31.8 | 33.0 | 34.9 | 34.7 | 31.3 |
| 4/25 1:00 | 32.5 | 35.1 | 31.5 | 31.5 | 32.0 | 33.9 | 34.4 | 37.3 |
| 4/25 2:00 | 31.1 | 34.2 | 29.6 | 31.1 | 30.6 | 32.4 | 33.4 | 36.6 |
| 4/25 3:00 | 31.2 | 34.3 | 29.9 | 31.5 | 30.3 | 31.5 | 31.5 | 36.0 |
| 4/25 4:00 | 30.8 | 32.9 | 29.7 | 28.9 | 29.5 | 30.7 | 30.3 | 35.2 |
| 4/25 5:00 | 30.0 | 32.7 | 28.8 | 28.2 | 28.7 | 28.8 | 27.5 | 34.7 |
| 4/25 6:00 | 29.4 | 31.8 | 27.6 | 29.5 | 27.8 | 28.1 | 28.0 | 33.8 |
| 4/25 7:00 | 30.4 | 32.5 | 28.7 | 30.2 | 28.7 | 28.8 | 28.5 | 34.0 |
| 4/25 8:00 | 33.0 | 34.9 | 36.0 | 32.7 | 32.6 | 35.4 | 31.9 | 37.0 |
| 4/26 0:00 | 30.0 | 31.1 | 30.4 | 30.2 | 31.8 | 29.7 | 33.8 | 28.6 |
| 4/26 1:00 | 28.2 | 30.6 | 28.4 | 29.8 | 28.2 | 28.5 | 32.4 | 27.2 |
| 4/26 2:00 | 28.4 | 28.9 | 26.6 | 29.1 | 28.8 | 27.9 | 29.5 | 26.6 |
| 4/26 3:00 | 26.9 | 31.1 | 25.3 | 28.2 | 26.2 | 27.2 | 29.8 | 25.9 |
| 4/26 4:00 | 26.2 | 28.2 | 24.4 | 28.0 | 25.3 | 26.2 | 28.3 | 26.4 |
| 4/26 5:00 | 24.0 | 29.3 | 24.2 | 26.8 | 23.4 | 26.3 | 28.5 | 25.6 |
| 4/26 6:00 | 24.0 | 26.8 | 22.8 | 26.4 | 23.6 | 25.7 | 29.4 | 25.0 |
| 4/26 7:00 | 27.2 | 31.1 | 24.4 | 29.3 | 25.9 | 27.8 | 28.9 | 29.7 |
| 4/26 8:00 | 34.3 | 37.6 | 34.9 | 34.5 | 32.2 | 33.5 | 37.5 | 38.2 |
