Excellent comments.

Bob, I'm glad to see our observations agree so closely.  Your points number 3 and 8 are consistent with what I was saying in my point 2 (both A and B).  Your point 2 (wind) matches my first point.  Cold hardiness of the variety is implicit for mine, and also mentioned as "temperature".  I also agree with point 4 (ground water) and mentioned it though unnumbered.  And then you extend very nicely to articulate additional factors... very nice articulation of the points!  I very much like the way you wrote that.

I suspect that your point about nitrogen (your point 5) is also related to points 3 and 8.  Excess nitrogen (especially at the "wrong" times of year) creates an excess of vulnerable green tissue.  It is the vulnerable green tissue that is most at risk, not only to "itself" (in the sense of that tissue being susceptible to necrosis from cold or wind or waking/waning); but that tissue also represents a risk to overall tree health (because it is an energy sink... it takes energy from other parts of the tree, and then when it dies it represents an unfulfilled investment in energy by the overall organism... in other words:  it wastes energy, and wasted energy weakens the overall tree).

I had not noticed the other things you've said (e.g. carrying green figs too late in the season), but that too is consistent with this notion of wasting energy.  

There's another point here that many of you have made (Andy, Vasile, Bob, Harvey, others).  In particular, the "late budders" seem to do better.  That too seems consistent with these concepts about tissue vulnerability in the transition times.  (Simply:  if it wakes up too early and leafs out, then it is more susceptible to damage from early season temperature swings).  Maybe this is a point 10 for Bob's list  (or you could think of it as a subpoint for point 1 I guess).

Interesting set of info in this thread... I'm glad to see it here!

Mike   central NY state, zone 5

p.s.  Isn't it funny how it all resembles tautology?  "If you want a fig that grows well in a short growing season with cold winters, then choose a fig that has adapted to places with a short growing season with cold winters".  LOL. 

Boils down to keeping your tender parts protected.

Bob, in keeping with the title of the post, what differences between cultivars have you seen for your points? Do certain ones handle some variables better than others?
I'm specifically interested in the second and eighth points, winter wind and warming. Any note worthy cultivars in those areas?

I witnesses number three first hand last fall when I left a bunch of figs on my VdB just to see how far they would go. A unexpected cold snap killed 2/3 of the tree, while others that didn't have any figs suffered no damage.

Figs in Ground           No burn  ¼ burn  1/3 burned Died to Ground
ABQ1                           X
Atreano                        X
Atreano Gold                 X
Beer's Black                  X
Black Celeste                X
Bourjassote Grise                                    X
Byadi                           X
Celeste                        X
Celestial                       X
De La Senyora               X
Deanna                                                 X
Desert King                   X
Don Fortiss                   X
Emerald Strawberry        X
Encanto                       X
English Brown Turkey                 X
Florentine                     X
Gino's Fig                      X
GM14                           X
Green Greek                            X
Hardy Chicago               X
Hunt                            X
Improved Celeste           X
Italian 258                    X
Italian Black                  X
Italian Honey                X
JH Adriatic                   X
Kathleen Black              X
Lamperia                      X
Los Lunas                    X
LSU Champagne            X
LSU Everbearing            X
LSU Hollier                    X
LSU Purple                   X
LSU Scott's Black          X
LSU Scott's Yellow         X
LSU Tiger                     X
Marseilles Black             X
Marseilles White            X
Martian Unknown                                     X
Native Black                 X
Negronne                     X
Pananas Purple             X
Papa John                    X
Paradiso GM#9              X
Peter's Honey                           X
Petite Negra                 X
Raspberry Latte             X
Red Celeste                  X
Ronde de Bordeaux         X
Sal's C BC31                  X
Saratoga                      X
Shar Italian                   X
Smith                           X
Stella                           X
Strawberry                    X
Sweet George                            X
Tacoma Violet                X
UCR187-15                    X
Violette de Bordeaux                                 X
Votata                          X
Weeping fig                    X
White Triana                  X

I had the above list of trees inside a nice table with more information but the website said it was too much data to add.  So, all the trees listed above are growing in orchard - in the ground.  I think a few are missing.  I think I have 68 or 70 fig trees installed, some are dups like Celeste, Improved Celeste and Strawberry because I like their taste.  Trees got no protection at all!

Notice how my Violette de Bordeaux got burned pretty much but my Negronne did not.  The exact same thing happened to those 2 in my containers, same exact age and height.  VdB got burned but Negronne did not.  Think they are the same tree?  HA!  Heaven only knows!  Coldest temp this past winter was 22 degrees.  All but 2 did extremely well.  Will report status of my 200+ container trees next week.   But I know my VdBs took the hardest hit and LSU Black was second. 

Bourjassote Grise and Deanna took the hardest hit!  But I my BG did ripen last year!  Deanna did not.  I wonder how they will do this year.  I might be burning Deanna or I might move to a pot.  She grew great in a pot a few years back.

Lesson learned -  The older the tree the more it will survive in my climate without any die back.