Cold temperatures is bad news for local farmers especially cherry growers, because their crops are in a critical stage right now.
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"Tart Cherries and Sweet Cherries are critical to this area its their bread and butter," says Jim Bardenhagen.
Jim Bardenhagen is one of those farmers, in fact his farm has been in his family for more than a century, and Bardenhagen knows all to well how much weather impacts a crop.
"Right now most of our crops are in what we call open cluster or tight cluster. In that stage the fruit can't withstand the cold temperatures," says Bardenhagen.
Those temperatures are expected to dip well into the twenties in Leelanau county and that could spell out disaster for area farmers.
"At this stage they're in they can handle 27 degrees. Maybe we'll have 10 percent damage, but if it drops down to 22-21 degrees thats a 90 percent damage level. Now the question is will we get down to 22," says Bardenhagen.
But for now all farmers can do is hope, that this cherry crop season wont be a repeat of what happened in 2002, when a freeze took out 90% of the cherries.
"That was a real disaster for the local economy and growers, let's hope we get through this and have a successful season," says Bardenhagen.
