Tapping Maple Trees in January

Every spring my family collects sap from maple trees and boils it until it becomes maple syrup.  The sap only flows through the tree trunks when the temperature is below freezing at night and above freezing during the day.  Normally this happens around March, but on January 26th this year the forecast was calling for overcast and +5 Celsius.  Warm enough that sap could flow, I thought to myself, but it should be at least another month before maple season.  So I dug out a few old buckets and tapped four of the maple trees in my front yard.

Tapping maple trees is fairly simple.  Find a maple tree (make sure it isn't a beech pretending to be a maple, it happens sometimes when it is a bit dark outside) drill a hole, lightly hammer a spout into the hole, hang the bucket on the hook, and top it off with a lid to keep snow and rain out of the bucket.

My guess was that each tap might produce one liter of sap by the end of the day.  That was supposed to be a conservative estimate, I have seen trees smaller than these overflow their buckets on a day with similar temperatures.  Admittedly, I was pretty excited to drink some sap straight out of a bucket in January.

By the end of the day the temperature went back down below freezing and I checked my nine buckets.  Not a drop in any of them.  Boo.  I have a few ideas about why there wasn't any sap flowing;

1. It was pretty cold the night before, so it might not have been warm enough for long enough to thaw out the trees and get the sap flowing.
2. It was overcast.  Sunlight would have warmed up the trees faster than cool air.
3. There was a chilly breeze.  I don't know if trees feel the effect of wind chill, but that gusting wind wasn't helping anything.
4. January might just be too early to be making maple syrup. 

While I was disappointed that I didn't get to drink any fresh sap, I am satisfied with my little experiment.  I know not to get to excited when the weatherman announces one warm day in a mostly cold month.  And when the warmer days do show up my front yard will be ready to go!