Winter gardening

 
Mid November:
Usually the banana is frosted back by the first week of November and wrapped by now. The leaves have been mildly frost damaged but the plant still looks good overall.

Musa Basjoo -Japanese Hardy Banana

The previous banana does not bear edible fruit. However, an unidentified banana flowered and bore fruit in late September. Despite the abnormal warmth, it isn't warm enough for the bananas to mature and ripen.

 

Blueberry plants showing they fall color as usual.

The edible ginger plants are still alive. They are zone 8 plants. One of them even managed to grow a flower (left photo).

 

The Raspberry crop is still going. Fortunately, none of the wildlife in the neighborhood have found it tasty... yet...

 

Early December:
After a few additional frosts, the bananas have been beaten up. Frost damage is evident on the Musa basjoo. I usually wrap them up after the first hard frost. However, temperatures have not dropped below 31 degrees yet this winter so there is no need for protecting the plant. 

The edible banana plant was damaged too, more severely than the Musa basjoo.

Christmas Torchcast

It's warm. Like crazy warm. At least on the Eastern half of North America and it looks to stay that way through the end of the year at least. Sadly (or to your twisted joy), this may be the first December that no snow at all is recorded in this area since December 2001. Yes, even the horrible winter of 97-98 had snowfall (Trace). For the time being, the pattern doesn't show signs of much change through Christmas and the rest of winter break. The El-Nino is still raging and true cold air is nowhere to be seen. What happens after the new year remains to be seen.

The chances of a White Christmas are near zero. Instead, we can expect a beautiful day after a cold front clears through the night of Christmas Eve. Cold is relative. Highs on Christmas eve will be in the upper 60s to low 70s and highs on Christmas Day will be in the low to Mid 50s. Showers and maybe even a rumble of thunder may be possible on Christmas Eve.

Predicted temperatures at 1PM on Christmas Eve, 12/24/2015

 

 

 

 

 

Temperature anomalies (16-20 degrees F) on Christmas Eve

Predicted temperatures at 1PM on Christmas Day, 12/25/2015

We are very confident that December 2015 will end up well above normal if not in record territory. The Climate Prediction Center, which issues Week 1 and Week 2 temperature forecasts (shown below), predicts that there is a very high chance,>90%, that the eastern half of the US will have above normal temperatures through the New Year. This may be the highest confidence the CPC has ever had for these forecasts.

Winter is basically nowhere to be found. The best chance of seeing cooler temperatures will be this weekend when a cold front arrives (of course, after . After that we go back to the torching just in time for Christmas :) Welcome to the Winterless Super-Nino of 2015...