Cold Weather Puts Heat on Area Farmers

Ventura County farmers are bracing for more subfreezing weather that could last until Christmas Day and bring some of the region’s coldest temperatures in eight years.

On Monday, the first official day of winter, temperatures dropped to 25 degrees in some parts of the county and could dip lower tonight, according to meteorologists.

That forecast has farmers taking precautions to save their crops, especially citrus and avocados, which are susceptible to damage when the mercury dips below 30 degrees.

“All those are subtropicals and really aren’t designed to deal with the kind of weather we’re dealing with now,” said Rex Laird, executive director of the Ventura County Farm Bureau. Strawberries could also be damaged, he said, but vegetables are probably not as vulnerable.

At Crooked Creek Ranch in Ojai, icicles formed on citrus trees when the mercury dropped to 26 degrees early Monday morning. That was cause for concern--but not panic--for citrus rancher Bob Davis.

For Davis, fighting the cold means running wind machines and installing heaters throughout his orchards as well as irrigating with warm ground water.

“There’s latent heat there, and as you put enough water out, that heat is released into the air,” he said.

Davis and other growers are also spraying their citrus trees to guard against bacteria that causes ice to form more quickly on leaves, blossoms and fruit.

“In a frost or a freeze, it’s the ice that does the damage,” Davis said. “Within a matter of weeks, the fruit turns to straw. It just dries out.”

Terry Schaeffer, a Santa Paula meteorologist who provides forecasts for area growers, said another shot of cold air expected tonight will make it the coldest night of the week. He is telling farmers to protect their crops through Thursday, when he expects temperatures to be warmer for longer periods. Temperatures should warm up by Friday.

“It all depends on what the winds do at night,” Schaeffer said.

Sunday night brought temperatures as low as 25 degrees in the Santa Paula area, but east winds kept other areas in the west county in the mid-40s, Schaeffer said.

“The cold was spotty,” he said. “At one point [Monday] morning, there was a 16-degree difference between Santa Paula and Fillmore,” he said.

Schaeffer said the current cold spell is “a hard frost that you’d expect during a normal winter.”

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Still, with winters having been milder in recent years, this week looks like it will be the coldest since December 1990. That’s when temperatures in agricultural areas dipped to 15 degrees and destroyed 50% to 80% of crops in some areas.

Cold forecasts especially concern Davis because the warmer winds from the east don’t usually reach his ranch in Ojai. Irrigating with ground water, which is about 60 degrees, can be the key to keeping his citrus orchards above freezing.

“We’re better prepared now than we were in 1990,” Davis said, “because we are able to use water more effectively.”