hot weather

What to Expect for the Rest of the 2021 Ohio Maple Season

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Just like snowflakes no two maple seasons are exactly alike.  No question about it, this season fooled me. After about 5 years of early tapping, along comes 2021.  During December and January, we experienced above normal temperatures leading to what many believed would be one more in a string of early tapping seasons.  Tapping in January has become almost routine across Ohio.  However, just like a deck of playing cards, every deck has 2 jokers.  This winter season we had two meteorological jokers.

The first was the presence of a strong La Nina with its trademark warmer and wetter weather conditions.  Hidden in the background far to the North was the second joker – the always volatile and never popular polar vortex.  A polar vortex is always a possibility during the winter months.  You never know when the jet streams will line up just right and push Artic air southward into our region.  This year we did not experience the full brunt of the vortex like we did in 2014.  The coldest air stayed well to the west of Ohio.  However, we did experience a cold spell that dominated 20+ days of February.

As result of the persistent polar vortex, the start of the 2021 maple season was pushed back until the last week of February and first couple days of March.  Even southern Ohio producers were forced to tap two to three weeks later than normal.  The first of March is not historically an abnormally late starting time for maple season in Ohio.  The one dominant factor that makes this season different is that our weather is still being somewhat controlled by a strong La Nina weather pattern.  The threat of an early warm-up and above normal temperatures are real.  And the first indication of that was the stretch of 60-70 degree temperatures experienced during the middle of the second week of March.  This was enough to trigger budding in red maples and silver maples of southern Ohio.

At the same time, many sugar camps in northeast Ohio set one day records for syrup production.  Sap flows were exceptional after the long cold spell of February.  As of March 12th, the same camps are reporting a half crop entering the third week of March.  The above normal temperatures experienced at the end of the second week, pushed the season close to the brink.  Conditions also caused a dramatic change in syrup grade, and Dark Robust and even Dark Strong profiles have mostly displaced the Golden grade of early season.

The next two weeks will determine the outcome of the maple season in Ohio.  OSU Climatologist Aaron Wilson is predicting a mixed bag of weather conditions for the rest of the month.  There will be some below freezing temperatures but nothing extreme.  For southern Ohio, the trend is for slightly above normal and for northern Ohio – normal temperatures.  Again, we may or may not see those colder low temperatures needed to reset the trees and delay budding.  What is also troubling is the lack of moisture.  2021’s recent precipitation trend is not typical for a La Nina year, and drier than normal conditions are slowly creeping into Ohio.  We need precipitation, snow preferred, to keep the sap flowing, but that key factor is largely missing in the forecast for northern Ohio.  At this stage, we need a hybrid of the two jokers to keep this season productive.

I will keep my prediction for the rest of March to myself, goodness knows the first two months of 2021 fooled me.  That said, I will be able to confidently predict the outcome the 2021 maple season in Ohio on the 15th of April.  What is it they say about hindsight?

 Les Ober, Geauga County OSU Extension

When to Tap?

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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.

february Forecast

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.

Februar Temp

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.

Underhill

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

How Will You Store Your Maple Syrup?

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Hopefully this is a question you are asking because of a bumper crop! But even in any year, if you have not sold all the year’s maple syrup and have some left in the sugarhouse or in a tool shed or in the corner of your garage, then you need to watch the inside temperatures of those buildings. In outdoor non-insulated structures, temperatures can elevate quickly and spoilage can occur. You may have thought that you covered your bases by packing syrup hot in a sealed container. But maybe not!

Let’s look closer at how syrup is packed and stored. Most syrup is stored in stainless steel barrels that were packed in February and March. The syrup went in to the barrels hot and each barrel sealed. Inside a thirty gallon drum there will always be a little room for air no matter how carefully you pack. The drums then cool to and fluctuate with the ambient temperature of the time of the year and soon the syrup inside takes on the same temperature. Steel transfers heat and cold well, but 30 gallons of syrup is a lot of volume and will remain cold for a long period of time due to its viscosity and mass. However, when outside temperatures warm to 80 degrees and above and stays hot, the steel on the outside of the drum heats up quickly often forming a layer of condensation between the warm steel on the outside and the cool syrup on the inside. When this moisture gets into the air space inside the barrel molds can form. This is the same thing that happens to jugs when they are not heated to 185 degrees Fahrenheit, and if the product is not above 66 Brix, syrup can even ferment.

The best solution for keeping your syrup in tip-top condition is to build a cool room. You notice I did not say cold. A walk in cooler would be the best case scenario but most producers cannot afford such a luxury. Take a small space big enough to hold several drums of syrup. This could be a closet or a small room inside a building. Insulate the room and install a window air conditioning unit through the wall. When temperatures go over 80 degrees F for any length of time, fire up the air conditioner and brings the room to just below 70. At that temperature, the syrup will stay relatively cool in the barrels and always trends towards being colder than the outside temperature. This strategy should get you and your syrup through the hot months, then once the daytime temperatures cool off into early fall, you are out of the woods!

Author: Les Ober, Geauga County OSU Extension