Effects of Hurricane Irene

Considering the lack of rainfall the past three months, Irene's effects in the vicinity of our AREC were mostly beneficial; we received 1.2 inches of rain. The longest continuous wetting period during the weekend was 12 hr, but there were numerous showers earlier, all with temperatures in the 70s, and favorable for rot development. In spite of earlier drought, we have been seeing a lot of bitter rot in our fungicide test plots, a caution to commercial processing orchards with light fungicide programs.

Last week's total for wetting hours was 34, giving us 542 accumulated wetting hours for the season.

Strong winds resulted in some fruit drop of cultivars that won't be ripe for a month, but it was interesting to note that ripening Gala apples, treated with Fruitone (NAA "stop-drop") on Aug 15, held on nicely.

Extended wetting periods and accumulated wetting hours

We have had the following additional extended wetting periods in August:
Aug 6-7; 15 hours at 74º  with 0.85" rainfall.
Aug 13-14; 12 hours at 69º with 0.01" of rain.
Aug 14-15; 14 hours at 67º with 0.18" rainfall.
 
As of today we have reached 491 accumulated wetting hours- almost twice the threshold for development of sooty blotch and flyspeck. This is running about 70 hours ahead of this time last year.
 
We are observing sooty blotch and flyspeck and bitter rot on poorly protected apple trees.