There will be a freeze in the TX panhandle the next 2 nights, hard freeze in the northern panhandle. Some of this area is the highest cotton producing area in the country. It should be noted that this cold was there on Friday when cotton was up sharply.
Here is a production map for cotton. This one shows the % production by state. Georgia, which had major damage from Michael produces a whopping 16% of the cotton crop, 2nd to only Texas which produces an even more whopping 38%
Here are the latest warnings across the country:. The dark purple is a freeze warning. The bright purple is a hard freeze warning. Much of the purple on the maps below also overlap with the dark green, high cotton production areas on the map above.
How unusual is this early freeze in the panhandle of TX where cotton is not completely mature? This is over 2 weeks earlier than the average first freeze date for Lubbock and in the top 10% of earliest freezes. The earliest freeze occurred on October 7th, 1952.
Normal First Freeze dates in the Lubbock area(which is in the center of the map below)
The northern Panhandle is going to have a hard freeze with winds gusting above 25 mph tonight. This is the Amarillo area computer generated conditions thru Tuesday Morning:
8-Hour Period Starting:
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How much cotton is vulnerable?
Good question. All we can say is that only 70% of the bolls were open in Texas a week ago:
http://usda.mannlib.cornell.edu/usda/current/CropProg/CropProg-10-09-2018.txt
Plants that have bolls not open, I assume need more heating units to mature and will be damaged by a freeze:
Cotton Crop Maturity Determination
TX had some major heat, especially early in the Summer, with a lot of heat units but might have been planted a bit late because of the drought early in the Summer. Temperatures below are from July 10 to October 10.
There will also be heavy rains in Texas the next week but the heaviest rains are predicted to be just southeast of highest producing cotton country.
7 Day Total precipitation below:
http://www.wpc.ncep.noaa.govcdx /qpf/p168i.gif?1530796126
Previous comments on cotton from last week:
Is the production needed? Trump screwed the cotton market as well.
Reductions by China.
Hi Cliff,
Actually, cotton prices this year have been around the highest they've been in the past 4 years:
Historical price perspective on cotton. Charts below.
3 month-major top in June!!
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~3 MBs of the crop had sub 32 lows yesterday with many hours of sub-32 in most cases. About 20% of the TX crop was then still immature (bolls still unopened). So, ~600K bales may have had some growth stopped for the season. That could mean ~100K lost (that's just a wild guess..so who knows?).
The coldest I saw was 27 (north of Amarillo). but 30 extended as far south as Plains in Yoakum County, which is WSW of Lubbock . These freezes were 2 weeks earlier than average.
