longisland

The harsh, prolonged winter is beginning to impact Long Island's multimillion-dollar greenhouse industry.

Most greenhouses make the bulk of their profits between March and Mother's Day, but the cold weather has kept customers away from their gardens.

"We don't want the pansies to freeze at the stores at this point," said Jillanne Johnson, of Kurt Weiss Greenhouses in Center Moriches. "I think a lot of the customers are afraid to dig in the ground because the ground is still frozen."

Kurt Weiss is the second largest greenhouse operation in the country. It supplies Home Depot, Costco, and supermarkets with plants and flowers. There are more than 200 greenhouse operations in Suffolk County that make up about half of Long Island's agriculture industry.

For now, all greenhouse owners and workers can hope for is a major warm-up in the forecast.

The harsh, prolonged winter is beginning to impact Long Island's multimillion-dollar greenhouse industry.    Most greenhouses make the bulk of their profits between March and Mother's Day, but the cold

Long Island

LI | Weather

LIFORECAST

Probably needed if it was a normal December weekend. So we have definitely steady rain all day today tonight though. It just translates into a scattered shower. So the worst of the rain is during the daytime. And then from a work week, we are getting a bit cooler, so steady showers, a big big plume of light showers and fog just continues to push through the island even at noon time. So you see all morning we're in the green. So rain is falling and then around 23 o'clock, maybe some of this rain stops falling a little or at least it gets a little lighter and it's a little bit more like a mist, but it's gloomy all day. There's no sunshine today. It is tucked way above the clouds and even 89 o'clock, we still have that quick little stray shower risk at that point though. You probably won't need the umbrella. Monday morning. Looks ok. We have sunshine in the morning. The after afternoon, clouds are gonna come back our direction. Overall, the temperatures look pretty good on Monday today, the temperatures look ok. We're around 50 which is what you're also stepping out to this morning, but obviously the rain makes it feel a lot colder. Now, over the course of the whole day, we're picking up about a quarter of an inch of rain to maybe three quarters of an inch. That's not a huge amount, but it's going to be relentless. Just that drizzle. It's terrible when that kind of situation happens. But for a morning commute on Monday, it's looking nice and quiet and the afternoon is near 50 in this time with sunshine. The general trend is actually warmer than average temperatures through the middle of the month. So that should turn off any risk of snow in the forecast. In fact, even though we have cooler weather, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, it's totally dry there. And by the time rain comes back next week it's in the fifties. All right.

https://vod.chdrstatic.com/transcode/b76f1870-8f06-435c-a284-839c07a657a8/b76f1870-8f06-435c-a284-839c07a657a8.transcribe

Cold weather takes its toll on LI greenhouses