Last Frost Date, My Ass!

IT FROSTED! It is more than a full week after Cleveland last frost date of May 16th and it frosted last night. Mother Nature is not being a nice woman these days.

There has been a frost advisory for the past two nights. Both nights I went outside and covered all the plants with sheets. The first night I woke up to no frost and last night I almost didn’t cover anything. I was tempted to wing it. But I said no, for 15 minutes of work you will save yourself alot of heartache. Glad I did.

It was just a light frost but still a frost.

I need someone to complain to about this and since Mother Nature is not taking calls, I have to find a human agency. Who the heck determines the last frost date and how the heck do they do it? Frankly, this year they are doing a pretty poor job.

Off I went to do some research.

My first stop was the USDA website. I thought that they might be the source for last frost dates as they are responsible for the US zone map. Of course, if their website was easier to use, I might have been able to definitely say yes or no to my question but their site search sucks and could not find anything. But as far as I could find, they are not the ones responsible.

Next I searched Google and came across this interesting post on The Honest Hypocrite: When to plant? When to plant? . Very helpful. He says:

The last frost date usually published in an almanac is actually the 90th percentile date for the last frost dates in the spring complied over several years. That means that the last frost occurred before that date 90% of the years for which there are records.

Apparently this data has been gathered over the past hundred years by meteorologists. So therefore, this is all the fault of weathermen. Hmph. Should have known. Weathermen here in Cleveland are notorious for not being able to get the weather right.

So maybe later today I will send an angry email to Dick Goddard. Or maybe I will go take the sheets off my plants and just deal with the fact that no one can predict the weather in Cleveland.