Montana: Blizzard took big bite out of city's fruit crop

Lack of apples, plums and fruit on trees and bushes in Great Falls and northcentral Montana can be traced to a foul snowstorm April 21 in which temperatures plunged to 8 degrees below zero, said Jon Thompson, city forester.

"It froze them and killed them, killed the flower buds," he said. Leaf buds on a number of ash trees in the city also were killed, although many of those tree leaves grew new, frost-free leaves in late spring or early summer.

"The flower buds are always more tender and more sensitive," Thompson said.

That frosty late spring storm also murdered much of the area's fruit crop.

Vermont farmers: Heat needed

Betts is hoping a dry, late-summer heat wave will salvage his season. He says Mother Nature doesn't have much longer to turn things around.
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"I think it's too late to fully mature the heat-loving crops," [LePage] says. "I hate to think about it, because it's such an enormous amount of labor involved in raising melons."