2022 Arctic Blast

We are located in the Talladega National Forest, in east central Alabama, USDA Zone 7b. In most years we experience winter temperatures that may dip down into the teens. In some years, only the 20’s. We do not normally have to winterize our trees much, but on December 23, 2022, the weather forecast called for overnight temperatures to drop below zero, with high winds that would cause the wind chill to drop to -30 degrees. I scrambled at the last minute to at least cover my potted fig trees with tarps. This may have helped – a little. Our particular location tends to be quite windy, so the wind chill may have been even more cold. This once in a hundred+ year winter event proved to be too much for many of our fig trees. Most of our well-established trees were killed back to the ground. Some of our newer trees didn’t survive at all. To make matters worse, a significant winter warm spell woke up many of the trees that managed to survive the frigid temperatures, only to be killed back by another unusually cold period.