After a burst of March warmth forced apple flower buds to develop earlier than usual, April freezes arrived at a vulnerable moment for Hudson Valley orchards.
Temperatures that reached 78 degrees in early March were followed by below-freezing weather the next month, including a low of 17 degrees in Ancram on April 15. Apple growers in the region said they could lose as much as half of their potential harvest, though the full extent of the damage will not be clear until late May.
According to Jason Londo, associate professor of fruit crop physiology and climate change adaptation at Cornell University, the challenge facing Hudson Valley farmers is that springs are warming faster, while the last frost-free date, which is generally in early May, has not moved earlier in the season.
“There have always been frost and freezes,” Londo said. “As the climate is heating and changing, whether or not those events are increasing in frequency, they’re definitely not going away.”
The warmth was part of a broader national pattern this year. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that March 2026 was the warmest March on record for the contiguous United States, 9.4 degrees above the 20th-century average.
For growers, the damage can be difficult to measure immediately.
Ron Bixby of Little Apple Cidery said he grows about 15 apple varieties in two 5-acre orchards in Hillsdale and Ancram. Both orchards have roughly 400 apple trees.
“Even though the temperatures were extreme, it’s pretty hard to determine, even now, how bad the crop loss is, because it was so early, in April,” Bixby said. “So our loss here is, I would say, we lost at least 30%, maybe 50%. That’s my optimistic [estimate]. But we won’t know until after the trees bloom and have petal fall and the buds start to develop. And then we’ll know for sure.”
Facing occasional cold temperatures is part of growing a crop, according to Daniel Donahue, a tree fruit specialist at the Eastern NY Commercial Horticulture Program at Cornell University’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. But when a freeze follows early bud development, the risk of losing fruit increases.
“What was strange this year was the burst of warm temperatures we had,” Donahue said. “That forced the flower buds to develop more quickly than they usually do. The earlier in the season, the more likely you are to have cold temperatures. That was the problem this year.”
Fruit growers can use a wind machine or helicopter to mix warmer air from higher elevations with colder air near the trees, according to Donahue. But those methods can be expensive, he said.
“A wind machine probably covers 12 acres and costs at least $35,000 to $40,000,” he said. “To rent a helicopter runs around $1,000 per acre that you’re trying to cover. So, they’re very costly.”
At the Hudson Valley Apple Project in Ancram, Gidon Coll said his orchard has about 650 trees, mostly apple trees, along with about 10 peach trees and two apricot trees. The peach and apricot trees, he said, have already lost their potential crop for the season.
“When you’re at bloom and the temperature goes below 27 degrees, it kills everything,” Coll said.
The apples may fare better, he said, because many were still early enough in their development to withstand more cold.
“For the apples, we have a few that are definitely impacted, but because they’re very early in their life cycle, it was a stage where they can withstand a lot more cold,” he said.
One way to check for frost damage is to open the flower buds on the trees, Bixby said.
“There is a little kernel, it’s like an ovary in the apple. Normally, you split that open with your fingernail and it will be green or slightly yellow,” he said. “If you split it open and it looks brown or black, that means it’s dead and that bud will not develop into fruit. It might flower, but eventually, it will fall off the tree.”
Although there are many damaged buds this year, Bixby said he still has hope for some of the trees in his orchards.
At Steelbow Farm in Ancram, delayed pruning may have helped protect some buds from the frost, according to Ian Brunell, who said he has been the farm’s apple orchardist since March.
Pruning, which involves removing dead wood and select branches to shape trees and improve fruit quality, is typically completed between January and April, Brunell said. But because some of the pruning at Steelbow had not yet been finished, some buds may have been shielded by the remaining tree material.
“It might have actually saved some apples in the long run, just from having the buds protected because I didn’t take the tree material off,” Brunell said. “There’s four rows of trees that won’t fruit. There’s trees that are obviously considering a complete loss, at least right now. But on the trees that I think are more 50-50, some of the buds are damaged, some are fine.”
The losses may also reduce the amount of thinning needed later in the season, he said. Thinning is the process of removing some young fruit so the remaining apples can grow larger and healthier.
“There might have been enough apples lost that I don’t have to do that much thinning,” he said.
Bixby, who said he generally picks enough fruit to make about 3,000 gallons of cider, said the best long-term defense against spring frosts is a more diversified orchard planted with later-blooming varieties.
“Once the temperature goes down to 19, 20 degrees, there’s nothing you can do. Nothing works,” he said. “Only thing you can do is grow more late-blooming and late-developing varieties that would miss an April frost. Instead of growing varieties that you can pick in September, grow more ones you can pick in October. Here, we have late-blooming varieties like Baldwin, Porter’s Perfection, Kingston Black and Northern Spy.”
The damage comes as state lawmakers consider new support for farmers facing losses from extreme weather.
In January, New York State Senator Michelle Hinchey proposed legislation to support New York farmers facing financial losses caused by extreme weather events, including freeze conditions. If passed, the bill would provide individual aid of up to 50% of a farmer’s estimated loss, capped at $150,000 per year. The bill, which carries a $20 million investment, is currently being considered as part of state budget negotiations that are underway, according to Hinchey’s office.
“Unlike other producers, farmers have little to no control over their own prices, and are regularly at the mercy of droughts, floods, and other extreme weather events,” the bill reads. “For example in 2023, a late May deep freeze destroyed thousands of acres of New York apple and grape crops.”
Bixby remembers the 2023 freeze.
“We’ve been doing this for 40 years, before we faced a frost that destroyed everything, in 2023,” Bixby said. “And now, there’s two in three years. What does that tell you? You’ve got to look out.”
For orchards, he said, modest losses can be part of the business. But losses approaching half a crop can threaten a farm’s bottom line.
“Often, you experience some loss, and it could be weather related, it could be insects or it could be drought,” Bixby said. “Normally what you experience is maybe 10%, 15% [in losses]. But when you get losses that approach 50% or higher, then it really is economically and financially a problem. If you want to stay in business, you have to have fruit.”