Winter by winter, how many chill hours the mountain delivered and how many times it froze in the spring — counted from the weather record at the village's own altitude.
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Two things decide whether the orchards here have a year: how much cold the winter gave the trees, and how many times it froze once the blossom was out. Neither is published for Bekaa Kafra, so this page counts them from the weather record for the village's own altitude, one season at a time.
Read for Bekaa Kafra, at 1,800 m. Weather record complete to 6 August 2026.
Counted the simple way: hours between 0 °C and 7.2 °C, from 1 November to 31 March. Growers use several chill models and they give different totals, so compare these figures with each other rather than with a number from somewhere else.
1,974 on average across the 10 full winters below.
| Winter | Chill hours |
|---|---|
| 2025–26 | 2,148 |
| 2024–25 | 1,883 |
| 2023–24 | 2,085 |
| 2022–23 | 2,046 |
| 2021–22 | 1,663 |
| 2020–21 | 2,138 |
| 2019–20 | 1,853 |
| 2018–19 | 2,189 |
| 2017–18 | 1,911 |
| 2016–17 | 1,823 |
Days between 15 March and 15 May on which the temperature reached −2 °C or lower at any hour. The window is the spring, not anyone's bloom dates — those move with the year and with where an orchard sits.
| Winter | Frost days | Coldest | Last frost day |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | none | -1.7 °C | — |
| 2025 | 7 | -8 °C | 15 April 2025 |
| 2024 | none | -1.8 °C | — |
| 2023 | 2 | -6.7 °C | 31 March 2023 |
| 2022 | 13 | -10.2 °C | 27 March 2022 |
| 2021 | 10 | -6.8 °C | 13 April 2021 |
| 2020 | 6 | -4.1 °C | 28 March 2020 |
| 2019 | 6 | -4.1 °C | 23 April 2019 |
| 2018 | none | 0.1 °C | — |
| 2017 | 3 | -3.4 °C | 24 March 2017 |
A count, not advice
Why anyone counts chill hours
Apples and cherries spend the winter dormant and need a stretch of cold before they will wake evenly. Too little of it and a tree blossoms raggedly over weeks instead of together, which shows up in the harvest months later. Counting the cold hours is the oldest way growers check that the winter did its job.
Why the spring frost column is the one that hurts
A winter that runs a hundred hours short costs a little of the crop. A hard frost in the week the blossom is open can take all of it in a night. That is why the two are counted separately here — they are different risks with different answers.
What this is for, up here
Apples and cherries are the village's crop, and the loss of the export route through Syria left growers holding fruit they could not move — one reason the shift has been towards jams, preserves and cider that keep. Deciding what to plant, and whether to replant at all, is a decision about the next twenty winters. This is what the last ten actually did.
Source: Town Tools research: Bekaa Kafra economy, checked 17 June 2026 (last month).
The record runs a few days behind
The historical weather service reworks each day's readings before publishing them, so the last few days are never here yet. The date the record actually reaches is printed at the top. For tonight rather than last winter, use the snow and road page.
Hourly temperatures from Open-Meteo’s ERA5 reanalysis (CC BY 4.0).
Source: Counted from Open-Meteo's ERA5 reanalysis at 1,800 m (CC BY 4.0), checked 6 August 2026 (today).