A dripless 50 degrees

[CampHamp]

Sap report from Temple (South Central): After the weekend cold crunch, these trees are taking a long time to let go! It went sharp up from 35 to 50 in about an hour as the wet came through. A couple hours later with 12" on them and still nuttin.

[DoubleBrookMaple]

It takes time alrighty...
I wondered how mine would wake up after -22, and sub zero for a day and a half. 15 degrees last night, it warmed up to 32 at 4:30 am, 40 by 7:30, 41 at 11 am, and it finally started running a bit. A high of 47 at 3, and it is flowing quite good now with 75 gallons in my tank off the 320 taps on 24"

[BlueberryHill]

Slow trickle here and then at about 4:30 it seemed like sap started coming in. Took all day to thaw. Hoping for lots of sap tomorrow!

[adk1]

I was surprised that mine were running actually after the cold weekend weather and generally I have a cold bush. I think the warm rain helped

[DrTimPerkins]

After the weekend cold crunch, these trees are taking a long time to let go! It went sharp up from 35 to 50 in about an hour as the wet came through. A couple hours later with 12" on them and still nuttin.

Air temperature can change fairly quickly. The temperature of the tree is quite buffered though, since it is about half ice. Even being ice, you might think that some would start melting quickly. However think of a tree stem as a series of pipes. A blockage by ice anywhere in the pipe leading to the taphole is going to mean that very little sap will run out UNTIL there is a clear pathway for the liquid to flow. Therefore, during thaws, you typically find only a few little drips for a while, then all of a sudden it lets go, like a dam that has broken. Actually that is what happened, the ice dam finally broke, and the sap is running. Now to make it even more complicated, this doesn't happen in all parts of the tree at the same time. The south side may thaw and run, but the north side might still be frozen for a while longer.