Florida winter freeze (January 2010)
Jan 2010: a documented market event that overlapped the wholesale price windows of 4 tracked ingredients — co-occurrence in time, never an asserted cause.
What happened
A prolonged early-January 2010 cold spell (Jan 2-13, 2010, one of the coldest 12-day periods on record for South Florida) brought several nights of sub-freezing temperatures across Florida, with lows in the mid-teens to low-20s F in growing regions. USDA NASS crop reports documented extensive damage to winter vegetable crops (including tomatoes and peppers), with some fields reported as total losses, and cold damage to the citrus crop; harvest was largely at a standstill during the event.
Documented account from our open, cited registry (sources below). Shown as context beside the price record — co-occurrence in time, never an asserted cause.
Affected ingredients
Why these ingredients were exposed
Each affected ingredient's public supply structure — where it comes from and how much it leans on imports. Context that makes the co-occurrence with a documented event legible, never its cause.
- Tomatoes (round)Import-exposed its import value concentrates in a few origins (81% Mexico · 18% Canada, HHI 0.68, a value share), at ~81% reliance by value. That is why an event in that origin region overlaps its price window legibly.
- Cherry tomatoesImport-exposed its import value concentrates in a few origins (75% Mexico · 18% Canada, HHI 0.59, a value share), at ~81% reliance by value. That is why an event in that origin region overlaps its price window legibly.
- Bell pepperImport-exposed its import value concentrates in a few origins (73% Mexico · 24% Canada, HHI 0.6, a value share), at ~82% reliance by value. That is why an event in that origin region overlaps its price window legibly.
- GrapefruitDomestically sourced comes almost entirely from domestic production, with little import buffer (reliance ~21% by value). Its exposure runs through domestic production structure, not import origins — a domestic event overlaps its price window.
Reliance is a share of import value, a rough exposure proxy, not a supply-security score; origin concentration (HHI) is of import value, not total supply. It explains why an ingredient sits in the path of a documented event — not that the event caused any price move. Co-occurrence in time, never a cause.
The detected moves that overlapped
Each figure is a wholesale reference against its own ±26-week normal — a market move, never a delivered price.
No sustained wholesale move in our detected set falls inside this event's window. The event is documented; our public price series simply didn't flag a notable departure from normal for these ingredients then — an honest absence, not a hidden one.
What moved together
Co-occurrence, not cause
Tomatoes
In Tomatoes's 6 notable moves, these ingredients ran the same direction in the same weeks:
Cherry tomatoes
In Cherry tomatoes's 6 notable moves, these ingredients ran the same direction in the same weeks:
Bell pepper
In Bell pepper's 6 notable moves, these ingredients ran the same direction in the same weeks:
Grapefruit
In Grapefruit's 6 notable moves, these ingredients ran the same direction in the same weeks:
Moving in the same weeks is not one thing causing another — many of these share a growing region, a shipping lane, or an aisle. It is a directed, bounded count: in K of an ingredient's own notable moves, another ran the same way.
Sources
3 sources
- Florida Crop Progress and Condition (week ending Jan 10, 2010) — USDA National Agricultural Statistics Service
- Summary of Historic Cold Episode of January 2010 (South Florida) — NOAA National Weather Service (Miami, FL)
- Climate Summary for Florida - January 2010 — Florida Climate Center, Florida State University
Documented events come from our open, cited registry (CC‑BY). Price moves are detected from public history (USDA/BLS/FRED) and shown as co-occurring context, never asserted as the cause. How events are picked.