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Like most of the country, southern Arizona has been hit unusually hard by the recent winter storms: no snowpocalypse here -- hardly any rain, for that matter -- but this week a deep freeze. In the city, we usually get, over the course of winter, a couple dozen light frosts and a couple hard frosts. We already had one series of hard frosts at the end of last year. This week, it was several near-record lows, down to -8°C, with highs barely above freezing.
So in addition to the usual and expected breaking of frozen water pipes not engineered for the unusual weather, we've had an unexpected shortage of natural gas, the most common fuel for heating -- it's piped in from the Texas coast, and high demand all along the route has resulted not enough arriving here. Some parts of the city went without any for a couple days, and several schools closed for a couple days for lack of being heated.
Our vegetation, here at the edge of the subtropics, is also not engineered for this. There's going to be a lot of damage evident in yards throughout town this spring.
Some already is. Trees are noticeably more bare, those that had had last lingering leaves, and the ground beneath orange and other citrus trees is covered with fruitfall. Even more obvious are the large spineless prickly-pear cacti grown as an ornamental -- it makes excellent hedge -- which have fared particularly badly, with most slumping and many completely collapsed in a pad-pile. Various large columnar cacti are also toppling, though the larger they are the less they show it: equal parts larger = more water = harder to freeze and larger = slower growing = slower dying. Those iconic branched saguaro won't show how much they've been hurt for a couple years, though damaged arms will curl downward sooner than that. And because the big cacti stand out so much, this freeze will show in the landscape for a couple decades.
---L.
So in addition to the usual and expected breaking of frozen water pipes not engineered for the unusual weather, we've had an unexpected shortage of natural gas, the most common fuel for heating -- it's piped in from the Texas coast, and high demand all along the route has resulted not enough arriving here. Some parts of the city went without any for a couple days, and several schools closed for a couple days for lack of being heated.
Our vegetation, here at the edge of the subtropics, is also not engineered for this. There's going to be a lot of damage evident in yards throughout town this spring.
Some already is. Trees are noticeably more bare, those that had had last lingering leaves, and the ground beneath orange and other citrus trees is covered with fruitfall. Even more obvious are the large spineless prickly-pear cacti grown as an ornamental -- it makes excellent hedge -- which have fared particularly badly, with most slumping and many completely collapsed in a pad-pile. Various large columnar cacti are also toppling, though the larger they are the less they show it: equal parts larger = more water = harder to freeze and larger = slower growing = slower dying. Those iconic branched saguaro won't show how much they've been hurt for a couple years, though damaged arms will curl downward sooner than that. And because the big cacti stand out so much, this freeze will show in the landscape for a couple decades.
---L.