Mother’s Day weekend is a big weekend for buying annual flowers throughout central New York. It really jump starts the growing season. My wife and I were at one of the larger local garden centers Saturday evening and it was packed! Hopefully the chilly weather Sunday made you put off planting those annuals. Temperatures dropped into the 30s in most areas of central New York Monday morning. Frost is a possibility Tuesday morning. Here’s what’s happening.
The storm system that brought thunderstorms to central New York moved into the Canadian Maritimes Sunday. The gusty winds that were over us Sunday (we gusted to nearly 40 mph) helped to yank down an unseasonably cool air mass from Canada. This air mass will be over us through Tuesday.
To be honest, it looks like temperatures will be a bit cooler Tuesday morning. The biggest difference compared to last night is the fact there will be less wind as high pressure builds in over us. This should allow temperatures to drop a bit faster than last night. In most places it will probably be 2 or 3 degrees cooler Tuesday morning than what we are starting off at this morning so my guess is there will probably be more reports of frost than this morning.
If you didn’t plant your annuals this weekend you can probably shift them into your garage and they should be ok. If you did plant them then put a light bed sheet over them. That should buy you a couple of degrees right near the ground.
Stay tuned throughout the day. It’s likely the National Weather Service will issue a new frost advisory this morning for Monday night/Tuesday morning. In our future newscasts we will have some more specifics numbers for you. The cool air mass will moderate during the day Tuesday so our threat for frost is much lower for Wednesday morning
