More than two dozen Arkansas towns saw record low temperatures Thursday, and 10 cities recorded the latest date for a freeze in decades as nursery owners scrambled to save plants and meteorologists kept watch on another cold spell forecast for next week.
The latest freezes generally occur between April 11 and April 20 for most of Arkansas and between April 21 and April 30 for the hilly northwest corner of the state.
“Everybody’s tired of this,” said Shirley Womack, the owner of Plants Etc., in Harrison, which on Thursday morning recorded its latest freeze in 50 years. “They want this cold to end. They want it to stay warm so they can get their gardens and plants out.”
Fayetteville reported 27 degrees Thursday morning, the lowest temperature in the state, meteorologists at the National Weather Service in North Little Rock said. That reading broke the previous lowest record for the day: 33 degrees set on April 25, 1983.
Lead Hill’s 28 degrees tied a record low set in the Boone County town in 2005. Evening Shade’s 29 degrees broke that Sharp County town’s 31-degree previous record low set on April 25, 1969. Waldron’s reading of 29 degrees broke the previous 32-degree record set for the day in 1983, and Searcy’s 36 degrees tied a record for the day set 130 years ago.
In Gilbert, the 30-degree low edged out a record of 31 degrees set April 25 in 1974 and 1983.
“It was cold,” said Ben Fruehauf, owner of the Gilbert General Store on Frost Street in the Searcy County town. He said a thermometer at his store recorded 28 degrees Thursday morning - 2 degrees lower than the National Weather Service station recorded in the town.The difference was because the store is at the bottom of a hill and closer to the Buffalo River.
In Harrison, Womack said several of her customers lost tomato plants, peppers and squash to the frost Thursday because they failed to cover the plants.
“If they covered them, it would have been OK,” she said.
At Keels Creek Winery in Eureka Springs, owner Doug Hausler watched his grape vines closely Thursday, hoping that the 31-degree chill there wouldn’t harm his produce.
“They say bring your plants in or cover them,” he said. “You can’t bring a vineyard inside, and you can’t cover them with bedsheets. We’d need 10 miles of bedsheets to do it.
“It’s not horrible, but it’s a setback,” he said.
Hausler said it would be a couple of days before he knows whether his vines survived the freeze.
Farther south, at the Mount Bethel Winery in Altus, owner Michael Post said he wasn’t concerned about his grapes because the mercury there dipped to just 35 degrees Thursday.
“You watch the forecast to see what happens, but there’s not a lot you can do,” he said.
Some winery owners burn hay to create heat for the vines. Others use dripping systems to spray warm water on the plants or run turbine reverse windmills to blow warm air onto them.
Post said most of the vineyards in western Arkansas aren’t hindered by frost because the Arkansas River Valley holds heat better than areas do farther north.
“We don’t get freezes that late,” he said. “It usually ends in March or early April. We weathered it quite fine.”
John Clark, a professor with the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville’s Agriculture Division, said he didn’t think Thursday’s cold snap hurt other fruits, such as peaches and pears.
The weather service blames the cold air in Arkansas on a dissolved upper ridge of pressure previously stationed over the state and on snow still on the ground in the upper Midwest.
Weather service meteorologist Matthew Clay of North Little Rock said that in 2012 the ridge of pressure kept cold air at bay, and as a result Arkansas had a milder winter than usual. This year, though, the ridge is gone, letting the jet stream deliver arctic blasts through a “trough” leading to the state.
Also, the winds are cooler in Arkansas because they had blown across snow still on the ground in North Dakota, South Dakota and Minnesota.
“It’s 180 degrees [different] from last year,” Clay said. “The cold air stays cold over the snow pack, and it doesn’t modify. We see the cold blasts here.”
Snows have fallen later than usual in the north, said National Weather Service meteorologist Paul Martin in Bismarck, N.D. More than 90 percent of the upper Midwest still had some snow on the ground Thursday, he said.
Duluth, Minn., has recorded 51 inches of snow for April - the most snowfall in a month ever for the town perched on the shores of Lake Superior in the state’s northeast.
On Sunday, 18 inches of snow fell on Bismarck, N.D. “It was snowing like a banshee,” Martin said.
On Tuesday, Bismarck’s temperature of 12 degrees broke the city’s all-time record low of 16 degrees on any April 23.
“There’s extensive snow cover,” he said. “We’re seeing the latest melt ever recorded.”
He said winds that have entered Arkansas from the north are like the breeze from a fan blowing across a large block of ice.
“You stand away from the fan, and you’re still feeling the cooling effect,” he said. “The cold air [moving into Arkansas] makes it a challenge for forecasters there.”
Temperatures across Arkansas are forecast to rise quickly. Little Rock, which reported a low of 40 degrees Thursday morning, reached 68 degrees by the afternoon. Clay said the mercury should climb to the mid-70s by Saturday and Sunday, and may even reach 80 degrees in central Arkansas on Monday.
But long-range models show another cold front reaching Arkansas by late next week, and there’s a very slight chance that the cold air could mix with moisture and create snow in May for the first time in the state’s history, Clay said.
“We’re watching our models closely,” he said. “We can’t rule that out yet.”
Front Section, Pages 1 on 04/26/2013