The time has come: The growing season in the D.C. area is officially over

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/the-time-has-come-the-growing-season-in-the-dc-area-is-officially-over/2015/10/19/6a5bc6fe-76c1-11e5-a958-d889faf561dc_story.html

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It was not clear whether all of the trees, flowers and other plants got the message, but Monday was the end of the growing season in the Washington region. It was the freezing temperatures in most (if not all ) of the region that did it, the National Weather Service said.

In an announcement issued Monday afternoon, the local office of the weather service said a freeze “occurred this morning in the majority” of the Washington/Baltimore area.

“A few locales did not reach freezing,” the weather service said. Those included downtown Washington and downtown Baltimore, the area’s urban centers, where warmth usually lingers the longest. Also included was the shore of the Chesapeake Bay. Water generally is slow to give up heat.

Because only a small part of the region has not yet recorded freezing temperatures, the weather service announced that “the growing season for sensitive vegetation is now considered at an end” in the Baltimore/Washington region.

This entails an end to the frost or freeze warnings that the weather service has traditionally issued for cold-prone area on those chill autumn nights. However, the service said, the warnings would resume in spring.

Meanwhile, it was clearly cold in the region on Monday, particularly in the morning. A record was set for daily low temperature at Baltimore Washington Marshall International Airport.

The mercury skidded to a low of 29 degrees there, breaking the old October 19th record of 30, which was set in 1976, almost 40 years ago.

The low at Dulles International Airport Monday morning was even lower — 27 degrees, but that was two degrees above the old record, of 25, also set in 1976.

So far this season the temperature at Reagan National Airport, one of the region’s warmer spots, has remained above freezing. sinking no lower than 37 degrees, which was 12 degrees below normal, but seven degrees above the record set 135 years ago.

The 37 was the low for the season, however, one degree colder than Sunday’s 38.