Florida Citrus Growers Get Break After Bitter Cold

Florida’s citrus growers got a respite Thursday from the bitter cold that damaged oranges and groves in many areas Tuesday night into Wednesday morning.

Paul Close of the U.S. National Weather Service in Ruskin, Florida, said overnight low temperatures hovered near the freezing mark across much of the state’s citrus belt heading into Thursday.

But only a few isolated areas appeared to have dropped below the 28-degree Fahrenheit threshold for the extended period of time necessary to damage citrus, Close said.

“It wasn’t quite as cold. There were some spots that were, but it wasn’t as widespread like yesterday,” Close told Reuters.

“We didn’t have widespread areas with freezing at 28 or less,” he added.

Close said the outlook was for “nice and warm” weather across much of the Sunshine State on Thursday with no return of a hard freeze for at least a week or so.

Florida produces more than 75 percent of the U.S. orange crop and accounts for about 40 percent of the world’s orange juice supply.

The state’s leading growers association, Florida Citrus Mutual, said on Wednesday that it was too early to gauge the overall effect of damage from this week’s cold snap.

But it acknowledged that the damage could cause a downward revision in U.S. Agriculture Department’s next production forecast for Florida.

(Reporting by Tom Brown; editing by John Picinich)