Weather 2010

In my climate (Nashville, TN, though these comments are applicable throughout much of the eastern US), the most challenging thing is drought. However, this can be dealt with fairly easily given our current water resources (the city, to my knowledge, has hardly ever had to place restrictions on usage, so if one can afford the bill or is willing to pay it, all is not lost). The water issue is compounded locally by the fact I garden on a dry wooded ridge. Over the years I have removed all maples near the garden, but even the deep-rooted oaks and hickories can draw large amounts of moisture from the surface, so any soil moisture from say a 1-inch rain in a time of drought quickly disappears. Second is warm night temperatures. At even modestly higher elevations and at even slightly higher latitudes, the plants receive a break from summer heat after sunset and before sunrise. Here that's not usually the case. Third, there are wild fluctuations in temperature, particularly in winter. This mainly affects plants that are winter-active and those that emerge very early in spring. As a hellebore enthusiast, this is not ideal as it can lead to crop failure (little or no seed) from prized plants in some years, and I have some eager bloomers that have their reproductive parts destroyed almost annually.

In terms of recent weather, autumn has been very warm, and until recently, very dry. There was a period of 70 days from late August to early November in which there was virtually no rain. I heard through a friend that a man who works with a backhoe said that the ground was completely dry even when excavating, something that he had not recalled seeing before. So far we have had a handful of freezing nights in which the air temperature dipped into the mid-20s, but I have seen even tender annual seedlings (S. coccinea, for instance) emerging from newly-composted areas, so at ground level the temps have not yet reached freezing. Also, violent weather phenomena have increased dramatically in recent years. A couple of decades ago, tornadoes were somewhat of a rare event. They have become increasingly common in the area as the warm seasons have grown longer and longer.