The National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration predicted in August that this year’s El Nino could be among the strongest in the historical record. “This definitely has the potential of being the Godzilla El Nino,” said Bill Patzert, a climatologist with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Canada Flintridge, CA, in a conference call for journalists.

Valentine’s Day roses in the greenhouses at Unique Collection in Bogota, Colombia, were sprayed with water during abnormally cold weather in 2010, in an effort to protect them from freezing by keeping them warmer. Unfortunately, a significant portion of the company’s holiday rose production was ultimately lost to the freeze.El Nino is a climate anomaly characterized by prolonged warming of central and east-central equatorial Pacific Ocean water surface temperatures, occurring irregularly every two to seven years, according to NOAA. The presence of El Nino can significantly influence weather patterns, which has some South American and African flower growers nervous.

Alejandro Llano, general manager and partner at Unique Collection Farms in Ecuador and Colombia, told The Produce News that El Nino is already bringing colder than normal nighttime temperatures to the area.

“When you have an El Nino, it is characterized by dry, dry weather for two or three months in the summer. You know you are going to have a frost when you have two or three months that are very, very dry. When you have a full moon and the soil is very dry, that’s when we get a frost,” said Llano. “Like last month, there was not a cloud in the sky and it was hot during the day but because of low humidity, at night it gets very cold. Five years ago when we had a big freeze, it was 32 at 8 p.m. and at 7 a.m. the next morning it was 19. That was nearly 12 hours below freezing. The plants are in the greenhouse, which gives them only a small amount of protection. They can handle 28-30 for a very short time, but when you have temperatures below that for many hours it damages them.”

Those cold nighttime temperatures are also happening at a very important time of the year and could negatively affect Valentine’s Day rose production.

A big worry this year is that in late November there was “a high likelihood of a frost — we will have done the pinch by then for Valentine’s Day. The new shoots will be small and tender at that time and would be damaged by a freeze. That would adversely affect our Valentine’s Day rose crop,” Llano said.

“We do not have heaters in the greenhouses because the cost of that would be prohibitive — no one has heaters in their greenhouses in Bogota. But we do try to spray everything down with water when it gets that cold. When the water freezes on the plants, it helps protect them by keeping them a little bit warmer — but it won’t help if it gets really cold.”

El Nino will also likely bring very heavy rainfall to East Africa in November and could potentially damage several farms in that area, so Kenyan flower growers are increasing their efforts to proactively prepare their greenhouses and crops.

“We are currently opening all the drainage systems and repairing the greenhouses where necessary,” said Gilbert Gathu, sales and marketing manager at Harvest Limited in Nairobi, Kenya, in a news release. “In order to prevent any spread of diseases we use proactive measures by drenching the flower beds with fungicides to combat fungal diseases like powdery mildew and downy mildew, which also involves foliar feeding to increase the immune system of the leaves/plant. Hopefully the damage to our greenhouses and plants will be limited, so we can fully concentrate on the core business and preparation for our Valentine’s sales.”

Edwin Verdezota, president at Royal Flowers Inc. in Miami, told The Produce News that there are always plenty of environmental issues including weather, temperature and rain variations that affect flower production, but he didn’t seem too worried.

“El Nino affects all agricultural production all over the world,” said Verdezota. “The highlands of Ecuador have not seen the effects yet. We typically expect rain and bad weather starting in November, so we’ll wait and see. We have dealt with this in the past so it is not new and we know how to deal with it.”