Austin Sigety has been a blueberry grower outside Dade City for a decade.
He said the freezes on Jan. 31 and Feb. 1 were the worst he's encountered so far
"We're projecting we lost 40% of the crop … but I know people that lost all of it," Sigety said.
Central Florida was hit hardest with many growers losing up to 80% of their crop, said UF/IFAS statewide blueberry Extension coordinator Doug Phillips.
He said other parts of the state fared better.
"South Florida … even though you had early fruit development, it was not quite as cold, so they still have a fair bit of fruit they're harvesting right now," Phillips said.
"North Florida, because they were further behind in the development cycle, they had not as much bloom and fruit, so they had more cold tolerant tissues on the plant at that time."
So, there will definitely be Florida blueberries in the market, he said. It'll just be somewhat less than in a typical year, mostly because of the Central Florida impact.
The U.S. Highbush Blueberry Council released a study saying Florida's blueberry industry contributes over $414 million in annual economic output.
Freeze protection didn't work
Sigety said the low temperatures in the 20s combined with dry air and high sustained winds made it difficult to effectively protect the blueberries.
"It'll cook your fruit and your flowers and whatnot. But if you do opt to run water on your fields for those low frost events, you have to contend with, actually, the physical damage of the ice load that you put on the bushes," Sigety said.
One form of freeze protection is irrigation: sprinklers and overhead watering. As the water goes from a liquid to a solid, it releases energy in the form of heat.
"Even though the outside temperature might be 27 degrees or something, that berry itself will be like 32.1 and so that that release of energy keeps that berry above freezing," Sigety said.
But the wind during this cold snap changed that dynamic.
"That's because of the air movement, especially related to wind, increases evaporation, and evaporation basically increases the effect of cold," Sigety said.
So many growers ended up with frozen berries and plant damage from the weight of ice created due to watering.
Warming but with cold snaps
After the freezes and other cold snaps this year, it might have seemed like a significantly cold winter season in Florida.
But the three-month period between December and February was actually one degree warmer than usual, said Shel Winkley, meteorologist with Climate Central.
"When you took all those daytime highs and those overnight lows, 59.7 degrees is what the winter temperature came out to be for the state of Florida. On average, you expect that to be 58.7 degrees," Winkley said. "So that's where that one degree of warmth comes compared to the past 30 years."
He said a lot of the cold we experienced across was part of La Niña, in addition to the earth's poles warming up.
"That can allow for what we call like a lazier jet stream," Winkley said. "Jet stream is basically where we bottle up the cold air to the north and we move weather across the United States. And so, if you have this lazier jet stream in the winter, that could allow for more of these big cold air outbreaks that can seep their way all the way south to Florida."
This year was Florida's 84th coldest winter in recorded history, but it was also the 48th warmest.
"Those exceptionally cold temperatures that you experienced, we can use what we call attribution science to understand climate change is fingerprint on it, both on unusually warm days and unusually cold days," Winkley said.
"And for February 1 being such an unusually cold day, we know a day like that is now one to two times less likely to occur going forward because of climate change."
Recovering blueberries for 2027
To bounce back, Sigety says he's going to harvest the crop he does have and cut back the bushes to encourage new growth for next year.
"They're not growing as if it was July, but they are growing right now. So that'll help next year's crop," Sigety said. "You take care of it, no matter what it is. The how you take care of it doesn't really change, even if you've lost stuff."
In terms of financial aid from this hit, Sigety said farmers may run into an issue with their crop insurance.
"There's language in the crop insurance that we all have that basically says, if you have a frost protection system, you have to use it during an event. And if you don't use it during event, you're basically waiving your ability to have a frost claim," Sigety said.
So that puts growers in a jam to either potentially harm their crop by watering on a windy night, which is known to create a lot of heavy ice from evaporation, or lose out on crop insurance dollars when refraining from doing so.
Sigety said the last freeze which really impacted Florida blueberries was in 2010, adding that these freezes have occurred within in a short amount of time and then are far enough apart to forget about some of these glitches in the system.
Florida's blueberry season wraps up in May, so we'll have a better idea of the impact by early June.
Copyright 2026 WUSF 89.7
