The growing season is getting longer

HOUSTON – The picture above is my oak tree, which I complained about two weeks ago when it dropped those cute pollinating earrings (yes, those yellow dirty things) all over the place. Now it has blossomed, and I hope that the pollination process has stopped. It seems to be early so I started to wonder when the growing season really started this year.

The growing season is defined as the time from the LAST FREEZE to the NEXT FREEZE in a given area. For us it is usually March-December. Although this year, most of us did not have negative temperatures recorded! I don’t have a house near the Gallery area. I looked at the official numbers:

On January 14th and 27th at Bush Airport/IAH the temperature dropped to 34°C and on February 18th to 33°C, but this year there is NO sub-zero temperatures. On January 26, the temperature in Sugarland dropped to 32°, but it was the only frosty morning. The lowest drop in Perland this year was only 37° on February 18th! In the west, Branham was freezing for four mornings in January, and the lowest temperature this year was 31 degrees on February 18th.

What about Konro? We all know that Conroe seems to be registering colder temperatures than anyone else. Conroe has dropped to or below 32° at nine o’clock this year, with the lowest temperature being 27° twice, once on 27 January and again on 18 February.

I don’t see frost for us until the end of spring, so our growing season actually started on the afternoon of February 18th. IF, and this applies to many of us, IF you have had frostbite at all. Of course, the big drop last December over the Christmas weekend was enough. In fact, in 2022, our growing season fell between March 14 and December 18. We had a BIG frost in 2021, but after February 20th it never went down to freezing again – not all year! The rest of 2021 remained above zero.

And if we go back to 2020, we had an extremely long growing season from February 27th to December 1st.

Climate Central studied the country’s growing seasons from 1990 to 2021, and here you can see how the country’s season has been increasing since 1970, by an average of 15 days a year. Some growing seasons have extended up to 60 days.

Climate Central includes a dropdown list for states and cities to see how certain areas have changed. In Dallas, for example, the growing season has extended by three weeks since 1970.

Houston is not included because of the statistics I mentioned above – we just keep seeing very long growing seasons. What’s important about this study is that a longer growing season means a longer pollen season. Given that about 25% of us have allergies, we may sneeze earlier each year and last longer. In the future, a whole year without frost is certainly possible for Houston! Lately, the weather continues to be extreme and, at least for our area, extreme cold has recently been followed by long periods of extreme heat.

You’ve probably heard the adage, “Climate is what you expect and weather is what you get.” It’s hard to know what to expect from season to season these days!

you can go Here to see Climate Central’s full report on the growing season extension. For an interactive tool from Climate Central, check this out Right here! Have a great weekend and super spring break!

Frank

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