I don’t think we have any more severe weather than the other states in the central USA. We have a niece in Oxnard California just north of Los Angeles and she is “bored” with the weather after living in Texas for 20 years then Chicago for 6 years. Temperatures normally only vary 15>20 degrees for weeks on end where she lives. She has no winter and no summer except for a couple of days out of the whole year.
Even though we had more than 6 hours of heavy snowfall yesterday morning by noon the sun popped out and we actually hit 55*F (13*C) that afternoon but dropped down to only 26*F (-3*C) again this morning.
Overall this does not really hurt the daffodils BUT the freezes do affect the show quality blooms and the rapid rise in temperatures really affect the colors we see in the blooms. We got a little over 4″ of rainfall (10.16 CM) in just two storms this month already not counting the snowfall.
We are late blooming this year BUT normally we would be having high temperatures about 85*F (30*C) with drying winds and THAT is more damaging to show blooms than cold temperatures that we normally see. It is harder for us to take care of the daffodils for a whole year and then not have blooms for a show because in this area the next show will be more than 200 miles away.
Mrs. Lee’s Daffodil Garden tours in Gladewater Texas are shut down this week due to flooding of their fields and roads. They only have about a million bulbs of 9 different early flowering daffodils so when they miss the peak flowering week they are done for another whole year. Keith Kridler
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