Growers Escape Damage in 1st Cold Spell

The first cold snap of winter caused little if any damage to Ventura County citrus and avocado crops, growers reported Saturday, as rain-soaked ground and light winds kept temperatures higher than had been forecast.

Many growers remained on alert through Friday night and Saturday morning with wind machines and orchard heaters in place and helicopters on standby at nearby airports. But by and large they wound up needing only the wind machines to lift temperatures out of the critical zone.

“We don’t have any damage,” said Bob Davis, owner of a 100-acre orange and lemon orchard in Ojai. “We were probably colder than the rest of the county. We ran our wind machines but I don’t think it got colder than 29 degrees anywhere. It was a normal winter night.”

Real damage, Davis said, doesn’t occur unless the temperature remains below 28 degrees for several hours.

Tom Pecht, who has a 140-acre lemon and avocado ranch outside of Oxnard, said his wind machines raised temperatures in his orchard from about 30 degrees to 35 or 36 degrees. “The machines were real effective,” he said.

Terry Schaeffer, a National Weather Service meteorologist based in Santa Paula, said the anticipated lows never materialized late Friday night and early Saturday morning, and that growers appeared to be in the clear until at least midweek.

“I was driving around last night and there were low 30s and mid 30s but there just wasn’t any kind of concern,” Schaeffer said Saturday. Once it got cold, he said, growers were out protecting their crops. “It was the kind of night when you wouldn’t have too much trouble doing that.”

Schaeffer said Saturday night lows were expected to dip down into the high 20s but that most areas of the county would stay above freezing.

Chris Taylor, vice president of Limoneira Co. in Santa Paula, said wind machines and a steady natural wind kept his company’s 4,000 acres out of danger.

“It got down to 28 in a few isolated, wind-protected areas,” Taylor said. “We had the wind machines on until the east wind started and then everything got shut off and we went to bed.”