Getting Past Year's Climate Data?

I have been horrible about journaling my garden experiences. I suffer from "all or nothing" syndrome - if I can't do it right, I put it off until I can. However, I lost 3 or 4 expensive standard citrus trees in the record frosts this year and I don't want to repeat the experience with the citrus I replace them with. What's curious is that an Improved Meyer Lemon on one side of my yard survived while the other died the death. So I'm figuring there are microclimates even within my yard... I won't be able to track that until I can afford one of those wireless remote thermometer symptoms.

In the meantime, what I *could* do is add the low temperature data to my journal retroactively. But I need to find a site where I could look up such things. Although I can (and am) looking at old SF Chronicle coverage of the frosts this last January and February, I'd like to find something that has the temps for my area of Berkeley. Does anyone know of an easy-to-use site that someone who is not a hardcore weather geek could use?

sounds to me like you ARE a "hardcore weather geek" lol.
i'm not sure how all those statistics will benefit you anyhow. best thing is protection when you are to be getting a frost.
what you really need to know is when the next frosts are going to occur, for that i think you need a really good crystal ball.
if they were record frosts i'm not sure you or anyone else can do anything about that.

Heh, Len. Well, the point was to try to pinpoint exactly which temperatures the surviving plants survived as well as try to guess when the dead plants failed. There is no doubt that regardless I will have to learn proper procedre for protecting the plants. Being a native coastal Californian (born in SoCal, moved as adult to NorCal), frosts are things I know very little about.

spidra there are so many other variables, that might be an endless pursuit.lol
when did you have the frosts? fall, winter, early spring? what were the temps before the frost? how healthy were the trees, how established were they. was the soil dry or moist?
etc and etc. they say if you spray water on your plants before the frost , the ice will insulate the plant.
i think you are trying to explain what a few hoticulturists spend their whole career trying to answer.lol

I'm definitely putting some hopes in the data basket. I keep figuring that if I'd just keep detailed data on climate, irrigation, bloom times, harvest times, etc. that I'll learn what's working and what's not, and be able to adjust accordingly.

I think the lowest temps came pretty close if not equal to record lows, so if you want a best guess I'd look up what the record lows are for Berkeley and assume you were no more than a degree or two warmer. The Weather channel website has places where you can see the avg and record low temps for any given month in any city where there's a weather recording station.

But Len's right about there being so many other variables, I had 3 Pittosporum trees, all were the same size and planted at the same time (December last year) in 3 slightly different spots in my rather small front yard--one at the top of the hill, one just slightly down the hill, and one towards the bottom. The one at the top of the hill and the one at the bottom of the hill were severely damaged, they've got sprouts from the base but no signs of life in the top 6' of the tree. But the one that was in between them just a little down from the top of the hill did just fine and came through with hardly any damage.

Oh yeah. As I mentioned above, there are clearly other factors because one Improved Meyer died and the other didn't. They were the same age but located in different parts of the yard.

Maybe...maybe...maybe over time as I gather data, I'll learn things. Maybe not. I mean, even there are actual patterns, I may not be sharp enough to see them.

I sure wish I knew more about database development. I want to develop a really powerful tool for tracking all the garden data I want to track. Unfortunately, I've got the desire but not the mojo.

Have you tried the journal & blog/diary here on DG? They can be fairly simple, but they're very flexible so you could make them complicated and fancy if you want. Out of the things you mentioned wanting to track, I didn't see any that you couldn't incorporate into the journal and diary/blog on here if you wanted to. May not be quite the format you envisioned and you won't be able to do graphs and things like that, but it might be a good start until you learn how to make your own database.

I tried it but didn't find it easy-to-use. Things don't do exactly what I was thinking they'd do, given what they were named.

I'm still going to try creating my own FileMaker database to track this stuff. I'll keep notes on paper for things I can't design yet.

I've gotten pretty good at using the journal and to a lesser extent the blog/diary, so if you want to try them again, I can try to help you get them to do most of what you want. You can either post here in this thread or dmail me, whatever works easiest for you.

Thanks, ecrane. When my hands are better from surgery and I can handle more typing, I'll probably lean on your expertise.

spidra,

On Weather Underground you can look up any date back to 1948. There are occasional blanks in the data.

http://www.wunderground.com/

Put in your zip code and click on the search button. Then scroll down to where it says History and Almanac, Detailed History and Climate. There you can choose any date back to 1970. If you want to go back further, choose a date in 1970 and click on it. At the screen that comes up, you can then choose any date back to 1948 from the drop-down box. You can see the past weather for your area by day, week, or month or use a custom setting. On the page for any given day, scroll down to the bottom of the page and there is a break-down by hour.

Of course, it is the data collected at the local airport, which may vary from your actual weather. You'll need to adjust for that. I know, for instance, that we are about 5-10 degrees cooler here at the house than at the airport, as we're out of town and up in the hills.

Hope this helps,

Karen

Thanks, Karen!