When to Tap?

The last 10 days of January 2018 had some very good weather for sap flow. If you live in the southern states or even southern Ohio, the decision to tap was a good one because you are never guaranteed a season past mid March. However, the decision to tap early becomes a lot more uncertain for producers further north. I present three maps for your consideration. The top graph is the temperature forecast for NE Ohio from AccuWeather. In my experience, their 30 day forecasts have been reasonably reliable.  The solid orange line is the average historical high temperature for the given dates, and the solid blue line is the historical low average. The broken orange line is the daily high forecasted temperature and the broken blue is the forecasted daily low temps. Once we get past the 5th of February, it appears we are going to drop below normal and stay there through the end of the month. Again this is a 30 day outlook, but it does match up with what all of the local weather stations are predicting.

The next graph is NOAA’s Weather Forecast for February. This Graph is indicating we will have equal chances of being above normal, normal or below normal, at least for Ohio. Looks like the likelihood for above normal weather extends up through New England.

The last graph is the AccuWeather Forecast for Underhill, Vermont, home of the UVM Proctor Maple Research Center. I picked this location because they do a marvelous job of tracking weather data. The temperature graph appears to be slightly milder than the Ohio graph, with a couple of above normal spikes.  The thing to notice is the sharp rise in daily low and high temperatures at the end of February.

I hope this information will help to make your decision easier and that you will seek out these planning resources in future years. Keep in mind that these are long-range forecasts with considerable margin of error.

Author: Les Ober, Geauga County OSU Extension