Larazo Aleman
reporter3.riverbendnews@gmail.com
North Florida residents awoke on Wednesday, Jan. 22, to a world of white, with some snow continuing to fall into the early morning hours, a phenomenon rarely experienced in the Sunshine State. The potentially historic winter storm, as meteorologists were calling it, swept through the Gulf Coast region beginning on Tuesday afternoon, Jan. 21 and into Wednesday morning, leaving a blanket of white on the ground, icing roads and bridges, frosting vegetation, and causing sporadic power outages in some areas, as ice accumulated on power lines and tree limbs. The nameless storm, in fact, was credited with producing the heaviest snowfall in Florida’s history, with widespread reports of 5 to 12 inches of accumulated snow around Pensacola on Tuesday evening, and the reported closure of a nearly 70-mile stretch of Interstate 10 by the Florida Highway Patrol. Milton, in the Panhandle, reportedly received the highest concentration of snow at 9.8 inches, according to the National Weather Service (NWS). Prior to the onslaught of the record-breaking storm, the NWS had issued a Winter Storm Warning for all the counties from Pensacola to Duval, alerting of impending adverse conditions and advising motorists to stay off roads if at all possible because of hazardous travel conditions. Meanwhile, Governor Ron DeSantis, on Monday, Jan. 20, issued a state of emergency just ahead of the arctic blast, putting into effect emergency measures in case the storm’s devastating effects warranted it. Many school districts across the region closed in advance of the storm, as did FSU and FAMU in Tallahassee, along with some local businesses. Before the winter storm, the highest reported snowfall in Florida supposedly occurred in 1954, when 4 inches of snow fell, also in Milton. The Big Bend region also experienced snowfalls of lesser measure in 1989 and 2018, according to the NWS. The wintry mix of sleet, snow and freezing rain moved eastward across the Southeast and then the Florida Panhandle on Tuesday and largely tapered off after midnight, although some sleet and freezing rain continued until the early morning hours of Wednesday, and the temperature remained in the low 20s during the day. According to the NWS, temperatures were forecast to stay in the 20s through the rest of the week into Sunday, with morning frost predicted for each of the days. In other areas of the country, such as Texas and Louisiana, the winter storm likewise broke records, closed roads and airports, and paralyzed communities with record-breaking snowfalls, according to news reports. And at least five deaths were attributed to the storm as of Wednesday. The farthest south that it has ever snowed in Florida, according to meteorologists, was in January 1977, when snow fell in Tampa Bay and as far south as Miami Beach and Homestead. Before that, the phenomenon occurred in February 1899, when snow fell in the southern part of the state, from Fort Myers to Fort Pierce, according to the NWS.
