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What if it snowed again in Miami?
In those early-morning hours, snowflakes fell as far south as Homestead and daytime temperatures for the region dipped into the low 30s. The headline on afternoon newspaper The Miami News screamed: The Day It Snowed in Miami. The rare event remains a special memory for those who witnessed it.
It is very rare for snow to fall in the U.S. state of Florida, especially in the central and southern In the Miami, Ft. Lauderdale, and Palm Beach areas, as well as the Fort Myers area, there is only one known report of snow flurries observed in the. The Cold wave of January produced the only known trace of snow in the greater Miami area of Florida ever reported, although the city itself did not report.
Hurricanes come and go, but snow in Miami? Many South Floridians missed it — so there were skeptics.
Veteran radio disc jockey Rick Shaw tried to set them straight from his radio booth. Both were nearly wiped out, and about , migrant workers around the state lost their jobs — including 80, in Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties.
Reubin Askew declared a state of emergency. Only once before, in , had something resembling snow fallen over South Florida. And not this far south, only down to Fort Pierce. The precipitation formed in the clouds did not have enough time to melt before it reached the ground.
If it had happened in the middle of the day, there probably would not have been snow, the weather service said. Connie Gramzow uses a cooking spatula to scrape ice from the windshield of her car on Jan. Record cold swept through Florida, damaging crops and sending thermometers plunging.
El Nuevo Herald File. This was the source of the trace of snow at Miami in It was reported that people stopped their cars and emerged from their homes to see the snow in great numbers, many having never seen snow flurries in their lifetimes. Flurries were seen in the air and on the ground a trace was reported at both Tampa and Plant City.
Simultaneously, snow flurries began falling in Broward and Dade counties ; it was the first time snow had ever been observed at Miami.
Across the state, record low temperatures were reported. Few other records were broken in North and Central Florida.
In combination with snow and abnormally low temperatures, a severe freeze ensued, causing extensive damage, especially to agriculture. The USDA reported the following crop losses: However, some water began flowing onto roadways, and with freezing temperatures, caused ice to form on roads in western Dade County.
Most notably, there was a ten-car pileup in Tampa, and another accident killed a man near Auburndale , when his car skidded in snow and crashed into a truck.
Areas of the eastern United States outside of Florida were also affected by the cold wave. In Tennessee, the Public Service Commission estimating that approximately , people would be forced to miss a day of work due to closures, while nearly 2, people in southern West Virginia were left without heat as a result of interruption of natural gas service. Every day of January was below average in Raleigh, North Carolina , and the city experienced its coldest winter on record, with January being The temperature stayed below freezing from the night of January 16 until January 20, and the temperature fell below zero Fahrenheit for one of the few times in the city's history.
January is the coldest month on record in the state of Ohio , with an average temperature of The Ohio River froze solid for the first time since , halting commercial shipping for weeks.
Some parts of northern Ohio stayed below freezing for the entire month [10]. Temperatures did not rise above freezing the entire month in a swath from eastern Iowa to western Pennsylvania northward. The cold wave was named the top story of in the Associated Press ' annual poll of the year's biggest news stories. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Cold wave of January A weather map on January 19, showing the high-pressure system impacting Florida.
The day it snowed in Miami". Retrieved April 12, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Retrieved April 5, The Boca Raton Tribune.