The National Weather Service (U.S.) definition:
“Hard freeze occurs when the temperature reaches 28°-or-lower for at least a few hours . It usually means that many types of plants and most seasonal vegetation will be destroyed.”
Of course, hardy perennials and half-hardy annuals will typically handle that cold well. Badly protected water pipes, maybe not.
Instead of starting a new thread, I’ll ask this question here:
If water freezes in a pipe, and the water pressure/ice has no where to go (as in caught between two closed valves), the pipe is likely to burst.
What if the water pressure/ice DOES have somewhere to go - say to an expansion tank or well pressure tank. Would pipes still burst?
That is - In a well system, if I leave an outside spigot open to a hose with the hose end closed (with a sprayer), the hose will certainly freeze and if cold enough, the pipe supplying the hose would freeze, too.
But would the ice split the pipe?
That’s pretty close to my personal definition of a ‘hard freeze’; though my personal definition is more than ‘at least a few hours’. My ‘personal definition’ depends on how likely I think it is that a pipe will freeze.
Yeah, there is definitely a difference between “well, there go the tomato plants” and “I’d better start worrying about my water pipes.”
I live in central Massachusetts. It’s been butt-ass cold for days (like teens). We never leave faucets running, and we have a well and septic.
I would think that water pipes would be at much less risk than a fragile plant. I get temps like 27 degrees for a few hours overnight every winter, and that’s barely enough to put a skim of ice on the surface of a pet’s water dish. That just is not cold enough for long enough.