Rare, Record Florida Snow Explained

Here’s what caused Florida’s rare and record snowfall

Who Andrea Thompson edited by Dean Visser

In scenes reminiscent of Milwaukee or Boston, Gulf Coast cities from New Orleans to Pensacola, Fla., found themselves covered in drifting snow. The palm trees had powdered sugar-like coatings on their fronds, and the golden beach was sprinkled with white sand.

Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport “shattered” its previous snowfall record, with eight inches falling on Tuesday, says Hannah Lisney, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s New Orleans/Baton Rouge office. The previous record, set on December 31, 1963, was 2.7 inches. Florida also appears to have set a new state snowfall record with 8.8 inches in the state’s panhandle city of Milton. The previous record of four inches was also set at Milton on March 6, 1954. Tuesday “was a wild day,” says Jason Beaman, a meteorologist at the NWS’s Mobile, Ala., office.

The rare snow in the south was the result of a confluence of events where cold Arctic air collided with abundant ocean moisture, similar to the Gulf of Mexico’s version of what meteorologists call lake-effect snow. Great Lakes region.

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The Gulf Coast often sees low-pressure systems spin over the Gulf, push north and cross the coast, Lisney says. Usually, that means rain because of the abundance of moisture they can draw from the warm waters of the Gulf. But arctic blast before this particular low pressure system meant that all that moisture turned to snow. “The timing coincided perfectly with where we got the Arctic air mass movement a couple of days earlier,” says Beaman. And the temperature difference between the warm, moist air rising and the cold, deep-seated air increased the snow, he says. The snowfall rate was one to two inches per hour. “That’s good snow wherever you go,” says Beaman.

in the year lake effect snow this is common around the Great Lakes, as cold Canadian air pushes over the lakes when they are still relatively warm and still frozen. The cold air causes the water in the lakes to evaporate, which slightly warms the air above the water, causing it to rise. As it rises, it cools again, and the moisture it contains freezes and falls as snow, usually in places like Cleveland, Ohio and Buffalo, NY.

With yesterday’s storm along the Gulf Coast, due to the direction of the airflow in the low pressure system, the storm focused on Gulf moisture to keep the snow falling.

While the snow was a treat for many coastal residents accustomed to sweltering heat, the conditions are dangerous. Snow melts during the day and then freezes overnight when temperatures drop, meaning roads and sidewalks are frozen in the morning. But in the coming days, the snow is expected to thaw as temperatures rise to seasonal levels.