FIRST FROST OF YEAR

Press, Volume XCIX, Issue 29165, 28 March 1960, Page 12

FIRST FROST OF YEAR

5.1 Deg. Reading At Harewood The first frost of the year occurred in Christchurch early yesterday morning. At the Weather Office at Harewood, s.ldeg was recorded. The previous March a frost, on Match 23, 1955, was of 2.4 deg. Frost recordings received at Harewood show that Christchurch was among the coldest places in the South Island yesterday morning. Lake Coleridge and Rangiora, where the frosts were Bdeg, and Hororata, with 6 deg, were the only places colder than Christchurch.

Little crop damage is believed to have been caused by the frost. In the Horotane Valley, tomatoes, the main crop at this time of the year, and peaches still left on trees were unaffected. One grower said that at 6 a.m. there was ice on his tomato plants, but he considered it could not have been there long as usually two hours of ice would have killed the plants. Leaves on tomatoes and pumpkins in the Belfast area were damaged, although not severely. One grower commented: “It’s the second frost that does the real damage.” No damage was reported to have been done to the orchards at Loburn, where most of the early fruit was over and later fruit was far enough advanced to avoid damage. One commercial grower said that cucumbers around the inside edge of an unheated glasshouse had been badly frostbitten. The cold spell was not considered a “snap” frost by the weather authorities. A spokesman said that ground temperatures taken from about 3 a m. to daybreak were below freezing point. It is thought that the cold southerly which dropped after nightfall and the cloudless sky left the air sufficiently cold enough to bring about the frost conditions.