Dear strawberry community,

I am happy to announce that we have been in negotiations with AWIS weather service for the past weeks and did come to an agreement, that will allow us to discuss and provide weather-related advisories throughout the year. Our Freeze/Frost protection advisories will begin this week.

With higher temperatures in the forecast for this week, strawberry blossoms will most likely be seen in more abundance in North Carolina. If you haven't your row-covers in the field yet, please bring row covers and weights out to protect you blossoms from cold nights in the next weeks.

Figure 1:AWIS Weather Service predicted minimum temperatures for the night of Mar8/9. This is the last cold night this week. The rest of the week will be fairly warm and will trigger flower buds to break in abundance.

We will provide AWIS Weather Service frost protection advisories from today until mid of May (if necessary).

Mark