A 107-year-old record low temperature will be broken tonight/Thursday morning with miserable cold reading of minus -15 F. This comes after 2 straight days of record low Highs (near zero) and low Lows (about 10 degrees below zero) on Monday and Tuesday. A possible record low temperature (below zero) will also be broken on Friday morning

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Meanwhile, our Solar Room was filled with hundreds of tropical plants and warm weather cacti and succulents. We've done our best to bring as many plants as we could into the main parts of our house (living, dining, family rooms, kitchen, the hall powder room, our bedroom, and the master bathroom).

Plants, that belong in the Solar Room, are now sitting everywhere in attempt to just keep them alive. Unfortunately, we couldn't bring all of the Solar Room plants inside our main living areas. The really large tropical plants, two trees, all the geraniums, my herbs, most of the Amaryllis, and a lot of hibiscuses are still out in the Solar Room (as far away from the windows as possible) with 3 space heaters running full blast. If the tempts don't drop below the current 37 degrees in the Solar Room, they might survive. But if temperatures out in the Solar Room continue to drop lower, they probably won't. It will be a long, cold night. I have even covered some of my favorite, large Solar Room plants (that can't be moved) with quilts to try to somewhat protect them.

The Solar Room is huge: 10 x 115' with vaulted 18' high ceilings. Most of the walls and ceiling are glass. So, the space heaters do little, except for a small area immediately next to the heaters & even that area doesn't get very warm with the heaters running full blast. This is a no-win situation. The room was originally designed for auxiliary, passive solar heat for our home on sunny days. The room can heat up to 80 degrees in mid-Winter and significantly reduce the use of our furnace. It's also been an ideal place to winter tropical house plants. That is unless there is a prolonged arctic blast like this one accompanied by a string of cloudy days with no sun. In that case, the temperatures drop significantly. The room is basically unheated, except for sun collection. That heat comes in and goes out the glass windows. So, the tempts in this room vary and depend on the sun and outside weather.

A February snowfall started all our current problem, followed by cloudy days and extreme cold. The unheated Solar Room needs sun to stay warm during the day and then retain heat overnight. We haven't been getting that. The high inside today was just 40 degrees, which was definitely warmer than the 2-degree daytime high this afternoon. But 40 degrees is too cold for tropical plants...

Guess the Groundhog was right in saying that Winter isn't over yet. January was very cold, but we didn't have this long of stretch of day after day after day of below zero, arctic weather. I hope my plants survive... Being dragged in & out of the Solar Room is already taking a toll on many. These looked a whole lot better as recently as late December.