PORTLAND (AP) — Orchardists will be breaking out massive frost fans and giant propane heaters in the Columbia River Gorge this weekend to protect their tender budding and blooming fruit trees from a freak cold snap.

At stake are 300 tons of cherries, apples and pears worth $110 million to growers in five counties.

“This cold spring has been a worry to everybody,” said John Marker of Sentinel Orchards in the upper Hood River Valley.

Marker grows 22 acres of cherries and pears near Parkdale and says his three large frost fans - 30-feet high, with 10-foot-wide blades powered by V-8 engines push warm air aloft and then down into the trees, displacing damaging cold air.

But the fans and heaters can only do so much. Cherry trees, he said, are at a crucial stage of development.

“If we go way below the critical temperature of 27 to 28 degrees, we could see a 10 percent loss,” he said. “If the temps get as low as 21 to 24 degrees, we would see severe damage, even total loss ... something I don’t even want to think about.”

Marker said blooming pears start to get damaged at 29 degrees.

Forecasters said the low temperatures in the gorge should last through Monday morning, with snow levels as low as 500 feet. As much as 2 feet of snow is expected to fall in the Cascades.

Tiffani Brown, a forecaster for the National Weather Service in Portland, said growers in the gorge will see their lowest temperatures Sunday morning.

“It’s almost not fair, especially after the highs of 80 we had last weekend,” Brown said.

Many callers to the weather service Thursday were worried about their plants, Brown said.

Oregon’s winegrowers and nurseries say damage to their crops will be minimal to nonexistent.

“Everything is still protected at this point,” said Joe Dobbes, winemaker for Dobbes Family Estate and Wine by Joe in Dundee.

Elizabeth Peters, spokeswoman for the Oregon Association of Nurseries, said growers are more concerned about getting their wares over the snowy mountain passes than damage from a cold snap.

She said 75 percent of the state’s nursery stock, Oregon’s most valuable agricultural commodity, goes outside the state.

“What hit us weather-wise was the cold weather earlier this year on the East Coast,” Peters said. “It really delayed shipping.”

The weekend may be a time for mittens and firesides, said George Taylor of the Oregon Climate Service.

“If it was midwinter, this approaching front would be an arctic outbreak with temperatures in the teens,” he said. “The saving grace is that it’s not as cold in Western Canada and Alaska as it was in February.”

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Information from: The Oregonian, http://www.oregonlive.com