Early Green Not a Good Thing?

Needless to say, things are greening-up a bit ahead of schedule across the area. Trees are budding and flowers are blooming about 2-3 weeks early. As you'd imagine, that's because of all the warm weather we've had recently. Rockford's average temperature is running about 10.2 degrees F above average so far in the month of April. Although the budding foliage is nice to look at after a long winter, it could come back to haunt some of us. As Morning Meteorologist Candice King said in an earlier post, Rockford's average last freeze is May 1st... That's more than 2 weeks away! If we do get a freeze, that could permanently kill some of the blossoms on the trees. Meteorologist Eric Nefstead and I were talking about this problem earlier this afternoon. He bought to my attention that some apple-growers could have a disappointing crop if freezing temperatures hit them now. So the warm weather we've had can be a blessing AND a curse. Let's just hope our hard freezes our over with for the spring!