Extended Period of Cold Raises Fears for Florida Crops

(...) “This cold snap is lasting longer than normal,” said Rick Davis, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Tampa, Fla., where the temperature can fall below freezing several times a year but will usually rebound by the next day. “We’ve had it the last three or four days, and it will last for the better part of the week and this coming weekend, so we’re going to have a solid 7- to 10-day stretch of lower-than-normal temperatures.”

Mr. Davis said the conditions were particularly problematic for farmers, especially in central and southern Florida, where January is the middle of the growing season for strawberries and citrus fruit.

Gov. Charlie Crist signed an executive order giving state agencies the authority to provide growers help.

Farmers are so worried about the effects of a prolonged freeze that Charles H. Bronson, Florida’s agricultural commissioner, asked Mr. Crist on Tuesday to lift a weight limit on trucks that haul produce.

“That way farmers can load up the crops they’re already harvested and get them out of harm’s way,” said Terence McElroy, press secretary for the State Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. “This thing isn’t over yet, and we don’t know where we’ll be at the end of it.”

Mr. McElroy said agriculture, the state’s second-biggest industry after tourism, had an economic impact in excess of $100 billion a year.