Gilroy
– Local farmers may have less to fear from the recent dip in
temperatures than growers elsewhere in California. In fact, some
county growers welcome the cold front that has swept throughout the
state.
Gilroy – Local farmers may have less to fear from the recent dip in temperatures than growers elsewhere in California. In fact, some county growers welcome the cold front that has swept throughout the state.
“Cold weather is good for cherries,” explained Bill Christopher, who oversees 80 acres of the fruit at Christopher Ranch. “The trees go dormant and usually produce a good crop afterwards. If we have 20 more days of this it would be even better.”
Santa Clara County Commissioner of Agriculture Greg Van Wassenhove said the cold weather will benefit all the “stone,” or pitted, fruits, such as apricots, cherries, prunes.
“It probably won’t be bad for other crops because many aren’t planted yet,” he said.
Temperatures in Gilroy hovered in the 40s and 50s for most of November until dipping into the 30s last week, according to Diana Henderson, a Monterey-based meteorologist with the National Weather Service (NWS).
“Since it’s winter it’s not out of the ordinary, but it has been lower than normal,” she said.
Between Monday and Wednesday, Gilroy’s temperatures bottomed out at 30 degrees and peaked at 59 degrees, according to Henderson. The coldest weather has hit outlying areas such as Hollister, Livermore, Napa, and Santa Rosa. The temperature at Napa Airport dipped to 24 degrees, the lowest reported in the area in the past week.
The cold temperatures are not all good news for county farmers, according to Van Wassenhove.
“Heating costs are going to skyrocket when it gets cold,” he said. “That’s probably going to be the biggest challenge to our Santa Clara County agriculture.”
He said plant growers and others that rely on greenhouses would get hit the hardest.
“To keep a greenhouse hot is going to cost them a significant increase in natural gas costs,” Van Wassenhove predicted.
It appears local farmers will fair better than their counterparts in southern California, where cold weather has damaged about 50 percent of some growers’ new crops in Ventura County, northwest of Los Angeles, according to Abby Taylor, spokeswoman for the California Strawberry Commission. There are about 100 growers in that county, where about 4 million pounds of strawberries were harvested last week, she said.
In San Diego County, the overnight low Thursday morning in Ramona was 25 degrees — the coldest spot in the county, according to the National Weather Service. Freeze warnings had been posted overnight in the central and southern San Joaquin Valley as well as in southeastern California and frost warnings were common elsewhere. The cold snap set in Sunday night — and forecasters had little relief in sight.
Henderson predicted that Gilroy and its environs would “continue to be chilly for the next few days. Then a new weather system will come in and cloud cover will trap the heat in. After that, it may get colder again depending on what kind of air is behind that system.”
Ivory Small, another NWS forecaster, said Wednesday that average overnight temperatures will remain in the 30s for most of California in the days to come. Beginning Sunday, he added, there’s a 30 to 50 percent chance of rain in coastal regions.
