Low temperatures this week may cause harvest issues
Cars traverse West Third Avenue in Moses Lake during a Monday morning snow flurry. Cold temperatures are forecast to last the entire week.
Cheryl Schweizer/Columbia Basin Herald
A snow flurry greeted drivers on West Third Avenue in Moses Lake Monday. It’s going to be cold all week, with lows below freezing, according to National Weather Service forecasts.
MOSES LAKE — The calendar says it’s almost mid-April, but a cold low-pressure system passing through the Pacific Northwest has left it feeling more like it’s early March.
“There could be snow,” said Laurie Nisbet, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Spokane.
The NWS forecast calls for low temperatures below freezing through the rest of the week, about 28 to 29 degrees through Thursday. High temperatures are forecast to be about 49 degrees Wednesday, warming to 55 degrees by Saturday.
The timing of the cold weather could be bad for tree fruit growers.
Tim Kovis, director of communications and events for the Washington Tree Fruit Association, said fruit development has already started in some locations. Blossoms had appeared in orchards close to the Columbia River in the Mattawa area by Friday morning. But orchards near Othello were not showing much blossom activity Friday.
Growers won’t know how much damage, if any, the cold may cause until they can get out in the orchard and assess, Kovis said, a process that takes a few days. But growers will be taking precautions in the meantime.
“There are going to be a lot of sleepless nights in the next few days,” Kovis said. “There are some growers that will need to be aggressive, based on their conditions.”
The cold and windy weather might cause bigger problems when it comes to pollination. Orchards are dependent on bees for pollination, and bees stay home when it’s too cold and too windy.
“Cold, rain, snow and wind. Spring. Spring in the Pacific Northwest,” Nisbet said.
Temperatures are lower than average, however. Nisbet said mid-April high temperatures in Ephrata, the town with the most available historical data, average in the low 60s.
“It’s a spring trough-y (weather) pattern,” Nisbet said. “This system kind of moved through but the trough hangs on.”
In addition to impacts on local crops, the unseasonably cold weather has had impacts throughout the Pacific Northwest.
“It’s a strong trough. It wreaked havoc in western Oregon,” she said.
Snow fell in Portland Sunday night, closing schools and leaving people without electricity, according to media reports.
Nisbet said temperatures are expected to warm up, at least a little, early next week. Lows are forecast to be in the low 40s by Monday and Tuesday of next week, with highs in the 58 to 60-degree range.
