Quote Originally Posted by DrTimPerkins View Post
Preliminary research suggests that warm falls and dry summers are associated to some degree with lower sugar content in the spring. Trees have to maintain their living tissues later in the fall when the temps are above freezing. In doing so they use up some of their stored sugars for respiration when it is warm. Since the leaves are gone, they can't make more to replenish the lost sugar.

Fortunately, the correlation is not real strong, and there are multiple interacting factors to consider. Making a prediction from this is difficult, and liable to be incorrect. The science is just not mature enough yet.
This is fascinating - I never knew this. I bet it helps explain something I've noticed - that the further north producers seem to have sweeter sap. Two posts down, Swingpure talks about how winter is arriving in his neck of the woods. That's far from true for me, and far far far from true further south.

Thanks for sharing!

Gabe