WINTER HAVEN — Local citrus and strawberry growers aren’t exactly sanguine about facing the threat of freezing weather the next three nights, but they know they’ve been through it — and a lot worse — before.
“We definitely are prepared for it,” said Dustin Grooms, the manager of his family’s strawberry-growing company, Fancy Farms Inc. of Plant City. “It’s always a threat.”
After the punishment Florida citrus growers took from Hurricane Irma in September — loss of an estimated 50 percent of the 2017-18 crop — growers are feeling a little shell-shocked about facing another harmful weather event, said Andrew Meadows, a spokesman for Bartow-based Florida Citrus Mutual, the state’s largest growers organization.
But citrus generally holds up until the temperature falls to 28 degrees or less for at least three hours, and current forecasts don’t project that happening in the Florida citrus-growing belt from I-4 south.
“We’re keeping our fingers crossed, and we’re cautiously optimistic by the early weather reports,” Meadows said. “We’re agitated. It’s been a rough three months. But all reports show we should get through it in good shape.”
Both citrus and strawberry growers protect their crops by running irrigation systems once the temperature approaches 32 degrees. The freezing water creates ice, which releases heat that protects the fruit.
Freezing or near-freezing temperatures are expected overnight and into the morning hours on Thursday, Friday and Saturday, two meteorologists told The Ledger on Tuesday.
The coldest weather will come Thursday night and Friday morning with temperatures forecast as low as 30, said Bobby Deskins of WTSP-TV Channel 10, the St. Petersburg-based CBS affiliate.
But the night before and the one after could see temperatures ranging from 30 to 34, he added.
A high-pressure front brought cold air and rain to the Central Florida area during the weekend and through Wednesday morning, said Deskins and Jennifer Hubbard of the National Weather Service in Ruskin.
That front will clear out this morning, they said, but another front will move in, bringing dry but colder air. That will hang around until the weekend.
The cold weather will come from a high-pressure area parked over Canada and the upper Midwest that is pushing cold air from that typically cold area into the South, the meteorologists said.
By Sunday, that front will move out, bringing warmer temperatures by Sunday afternoon, they said.
Daytime temperatures on Thursday, Friday and Saturday will be in the 50s, Hubbard said.
The normal high temperature for this area is about 70 on those dates, Deskins said.
Kenneth Parker, executive director of the Florida Strawberry Growers Association in Dover, agreed with Grooms that his members will be vigilant but prepared.
“These growers have dealt with freezing temperatures before,” he said. “They know how to protect their plants.”
Citrus growers may have some concern that their trees could see additional fruit loss even if the temperatures stay above the 28 degree threshold for a citrus freeze, said Gene Albrigo, a retired professor of horticulture at the Citrus Research and Education Center in Lake Alfred.
Albrigo was recently named to the Florida Citrus Hall of Fame.
Trees are in a weaker condition not only from Irma but from more than a decade fighting citrus greening, a fatal bacterial disease, he said.
Greening-infected trees in particular don’t handle additional stresses as well as healthy trees, Albrigo said.
“We don’t know how citrus trees with (greening) are going to react to any more stress. I can’t say cold stress would be any more of a problem than anything else,” he said. “If it doesn’t do more than (fall below 30 degrees), I don’t think they’ll have much of a problem. My worry would be (the forecasts) are wrong and it could get colder.”
Kevin Bouffard can be reached at kevin.bouffard@theledger.com or at 863-401-6980.