By Leef Smith
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, April 14, 2007

Fruit growers across Virginia and Maryland have suffered substantial crop damage from a springtime roller coaster of weather changes expected to continue this weekend, pummeling the region with heavy rains and high winds.

That storm could begin as early as tonight, dumping two to three inches of rain on the Washington area and ushering in heavy winds gusting up to 40 mph. Although temperatures are not expected to dip below the mid-40s until tomorrow, weather analysts were characterizing the predicted heavy-rain event as a "major storm."

"It's going to be miserable," said Bob Smerbeck, a senior meteorologist for AccuWeather. "You'll be dealing with some flooding. Small streams and creeks in low-lying areas will fill with water. It could become a dangerous situation out there."

Temperatures in the region are expected to dip into the mid- and upper 30s tomorrow, Monday and Tuesday nights. Farther north, a significant snowstorm is predicted into central Pennsylvania, New York and northern New England.

"It's going to feel more like January and February than April," said Bob Ryan, chief meteorologist for WRC (Channel 4). "It's going to be a chilly week."

Fickle weather patterns -- which have vacillated between a few unseasonably warm days in March to an unusually cold April -- have perhaps been hardest on many fruit growers, whose crops bloomed early only to be walloped by a lengthy Easter-time freeze.

Crop damage varies dramatically from region to region but was particularly bad, agriculture officials say, in Southern and Eastern Maryland, where peach and strawberry crops were hard hit. Officials described the damage in Virginia as a mixed bag.

"This year will definitely separate the men from the boys when it comes to who saves their crops and who doesn't," said J. Allen Swann, 62, who has been tending his family farm in Owings since 1974. Last Saturday, he was contending with a blanket of snow covering his crops, including 40 acres of peaches.

"You're just at the mercy of the weather," Swann said. "You just have to go along for the ride. It's part of the game. It's part of the risk."

Freezing temperatures have been blamed for damaging as much as 70 percent of California's citrus crops and harming tomatoes in Florida and peaches in Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama and elsewhere.

Closer to home, growers have hardly gone unscathed, although agriculture officials say it's too soon to predict total losses or say whether fruit prices will be affected.

"Extreme hot followed by extreme cold, maybe followed by extreme wet," said Elaine Lidholm, spokeswoman for the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. "One farmer I know said you just go to bed and pray. It's a very iffy time of year."

Bennett Saunders, 46, has been a farmer since he graduated from college, running the Saunders Brothers farm in Nelson County, Va., with his family. The farm, between Charlottesville and Lynchburg, has about 150 acres of orchards, which yield 50,000 bushels of peaches and apples a year.

Although Saunders said no one flinches when a cold night strikes, farmers were unprepared for the five consecutive nights of low temperatures that he said began about April 6.

"Five nights is very unusual," Saunders said.

Although it's still early in the game for growers, whose fortunes can be won or lost by the return of sunny, warm days and the success of pollination -- Saunders estimates that his farm has lost 20 to 30 percent of its apple crop and as much as 50 percent of its peaches.

"The whole doggone winter has been a mess," said Joe Fiola, a specialist in grape growing and small fruit with the University of Maryland and Maryland Cooperative Extension. "It started much longer than normal and stayed later. Then it was 80 degrees. Now cold weather again. If you talk to a grower in Southern Maryland, they'll tell you they lose a crop one out of every 10 years. This will be one of those bad years for them."

Agriculture officials say the weather might be responsible for destroying as much as 30 to 50 percent of the peach crop in Southern Maryland, as well as wiping out about 30 to 40 percent of the early strawberry crop.

Lidholm said farmers "live or die" by the skies, and anticipating periods of bad weather is just part of their difficult business.

John Marker, 59, who runs Marker-Miller Orchards, with about 350 acres of fruit trees just outside Winchester, Va., considers himself among the lucky. Although some growers he knows were hit by the frost, he still expects to have healthy peach and apple crops.

"People have been calling asking what we're doing to prepare for [unseasonable] weather," Marker said. "I tell them all we can do is pray."