Florida Weather

[gatorcane]

Looks a lot like a typical summer day out there across South Florida today. Cumulus clouds building with seabreeze interaction...low sun angle makes for bearable warmth but wow where is winter?

[Hurricaneman]

Looks a lot like a typical summer day out there across South Florida today. Cumulus clouds building with seabreeze interaction...low sun angle makes for bearable warmth but wow where is winter?

Hidden away never to return

in all seriousness I wouldn't be surprised to see a weeks period of cooler if not a freeze or 2 in the next month or so

[gatorcane]

Kindaof a summary forecast for the long-range for South Florida:

LONG TERM /Friday night through Tuesday/
High pressure builds into the region this weekend, bringing
warmer temperatures and increased humidity. Easterly flow may lead
to an enhanced risk for Atlantic beach rip currents. For
Saturday, there`s a continued slight chance for showers along the
east coast. By Sunday, a cold front will enter northern Florida.
Although this feature is expected to stall well north of the
region, it will act to turn winds more southeasterly in direction
by Sunday. With moisture streaming northward toward the front and
slightly convergent low-level flow over interior South Florida,a
few mainly afternoon showers cant be ruled out. Significant
or widespread rainfall is not expected through the long term,
however. By Monday and Tuesday, best moisture and convergence is
to the north of South Florida, so rain chances will diminish.
Temperatures will continue the trend of above average for mid-
December. Maxima will exceed 80 degrees most locations with minima
in the 60s interior and west, low 70s over the east coast urban
areas.

http://forecast.weather.gov/product.php ... glossary=0

[psyclone]

it looks like a stretch of really warm weather is coming. I've noticed the NWS has been undershooting temps recently in my region...the forecast looks warm but I suspect it will be warmer than depicted.

[HURRICANELONNY]

Look at the CPC prog AO/NAO. No wonder we can't get any cold air down here. Maybe it will flip in 2017 or 2018
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/p ... x/ao.shtml

[Ntxw]

I know you guys are baking down there in Florida...it's very disappointing for winter/cool air. I was trying to look at historical maps of southeast cold blasts, particularly events that effects Florida to see how the atmospheric evolution is for your region before a cold blast. You guys know the climate there best, so can you help me with some years that are notable for Florida cold? If you can narrow it down months/weeks that would be really helpful. In deep south Texas a really damaging freeze is usually associated with a "McFarland" signature type pattern, I wanted to see if y'all had a similar set up with a particular 500mb pattern.

[psyclone]

December 2010 featured persistent unrelenting cold...as did January of 2010. January of 2003 had a big deep freeze. December of 1989 brough frozen precip into central florida....I think January of 1985 delivered the goods too. If we go back to January of 1977 we get some light snow accumulations in the bay area.

[northjaxpro]

Also, don't forget about the December 1983 Arctic Outbreak in which the temp dropped to 13 degrees in Jacksonville . That was later surpassed by the great Arctic outbreak in January 1985 when it dropped to 7 degrees in Jax, the all-time minimum temperature record.

December 23-24, 1989 bought me 2 inches of snowfall and the only white Christmas ever experienced here in Jacksonville and a record 53 consecutive hours of temperatures below freezing. The January 2010 outbreak was indeed the last true arctic outbreak to impact the entire peninsula. It has been more than six years now. You have to wonder just when our luck will finally run out with the arctic cold outbreaks coming back to impact us again.

[northjaxpro]

I know you guys are baking down there in Florida...it's very disappointing for winter/cool air. I was trying to look at historical maps of southeast cold blasts, particularly events that effects Florida to see how the atmospheric evolution is for your region before a cold blast. You guys know the climate there best, so can you help me with some years that are notable for Florida cold? If you can narrow it down months/weeks that would be really helpful. In deep south Texas a really damaging freeze is usually associated with a "McFarland" signature type pattern, I wanted to see if y'all had a similar set up with a particular 500mb pattern.

Well if you look back to Florida's coldest winters on record as follows: Jan 77, Dec 83, Dec 89, and Dec 09.and Jan'10.

All of these were bought on by the negative NAO. A major tanking of the NAO will bring Old Man Winter in our part of the country in most cases.

The ideal teleconnections set up for major cold outbreaks for Florida and the Southeast U.S. is for +PNA/-AO/-NAO, which really has not been this way in winter since January 2010.

[Ntxw]

That's pretty much on the money northjaxpro. A composite of the listed winters yields this



I can post the individual months of the years listed but that would take up a huge post, which I can if requested. But a composite of them all shows the -NAO is a must. +PNA is preferable, the AO mostly negative helps but not detrimental. Having a trough axis center along the mid Atlantic coast really helps. Also ridging in Alaska is favored to deliver but the big key in all of them is the very negative NAO centered near Greenland. A subtle but fairly big signal is low pressures south of the Aleutians and NW of Hawaii.

[Ntxw]

I also took a 500mb map of January 8th (the day before the epicenter of the Jan 2010 outbreak) and it seems you guys do have your version of the "Mcfarland signature". Just for Texas the ridge apex is near Alaska while Florida's would be the Alberta/Northwest Territories Canada. The backwards (S) pattern

[psyclone]

Great posts. i vividly recall the December 1983 and January 1985 cold as a kid in Ohio...the latter of which established the all time record low at the Akron Canton airport (KCAK) of -24 which stood until it was toppled in January 1994. that was some true vodka cold. In addition to the longwave patterns referenced above, there's no doubt the southward extent of snowcover is of some importance as it relates to preserving the integrity of arctic air as it heads south. the season for big time cold in FL is short...mid December to mid February covers it and the state record of -2 in Tallahassee from Feb 1899 still stands. I'm in no hurry to break that one..

[Patrick99]

I've seen all the above cold snaps, and January 2010 was truly the weird one, not only for its duration, but for the fact that several days featured a very raw, damp cold with occasional freezing precip. Our arctic outbreaks are typically very dry....bluebird skies during the day, radiational cooling at night. I guess you'd have to go all the way back to 1977 to find something similar.

Although it was more of the typical shorter duration cold snap than what happened in 2010, Christmas morning 1989 was the coldest I've been in South Florida.

[Patrick99]

http://weather.unisys.com/surface/sst_anom.gif

Also look at the slug of warmer than normal water by a couple of degrees in the FL Straits....our current weather isn't going to cool that down very much. To me that would argue for incursion of a warm marine layer on nights we do see some radiational cooling.

Look at all that cooler water in the equatorial Pacific and warmer water all across the tropical Atlantic. This looks like a slam dunk La Nina winter for us....mostly warm with dry and quick-moving cool shots.

[NDG]

What made January 2010 very interesting for FL besides the right teleconnections of a big -NAO & +PNA along with a -AO is that it was an El Nino winter, so we had frozen precip reported all the way down to S FL, I remember that Sunday morning Jan 9th waking up to sleet & light snow flurries, I couldn't believe my eyes. We had a good 12 hrs of subfreezing temps the night of the 9th.



tatement as of 4:37 PM EST on January 9, 2010

... Wintry precipitation is seen over much of east central Florida...

Ingredients came together to produce a very rare and wide ranging
occurrence of sleet... ice pellets and in a few cases snow flurries
today in east central Florida. Numerous reports of sleet were
received by the NWS office in Melbourne along and north of a line
from Poinciana in Osceola County to Palm Bay in southern Brevard
County.

A few locations over lake... Volusia... Seminole... Orange... and North
Brevard counties reported light accumulations of sleet on vehicles
or roof tops. There were no known accumulations of wintry
precipitation on grassy surfaces or the ground.

This event is comparable in areal coverage to a sleet and snow event
that occurred in central Florida on January 19 1977.
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[psyclone]

What a miserable event Jan 2010 was..while I didn't observe frozen precip the cold was rough. In fact most of the coconut palms around my neighborhood were killed during the 2009-10 cold weather. Plenty of tropicals don't need a freeze to be killed....protracted non freezing cold will do it. It seems like a big cold event every decade or so is what really separates central Florida from the southern portion of the state WRT flora.

[gatorcane]

Well it looks like it will be a warm Christmas so nothing like a 1989 repeat in the cards and certainly no sign of a January 2010 event, though still too far out to know for sure. Check out that ridge over Florida for Christmas.

[A.V.]

I laugh at those Floridians that are crying about this warm weather. Are you people kidding? The warmth is gorgeous, and is why people want to vacation in your state. Check out a place like Dallas, which is about to go from 73F to 19F, if predictions are correct; very disgusting weather.

[A.V.]

What a miserable event Jan 2010 was..while I didn't observe frozen precip the cold was rough. In fact most of the coconut palms around my neighborhood were killed during the 2009-10 cold weather. Plenty of tropicals don't need a freeze to be killed....protracted non freezing cold will do it. It seems like a big cold event every decade or so is what really separates central Florida from the southern portion of the state WRT flora.

Overall, North America is just one screwed up continent. Think about this: Miami, which is tropical in climate, just 2 degrees above Cancer, and far south on a peninsula, has the SAME record low temperature as Malaga, Spain, which is much higher in latitude. Donald Trump's border dispute is between the wrong countries; let that wall be built along the Canadian border, to block out these useless arctic air masses.

[otowntiger]

:uarrow: Also, don't forget about the December 1983 Arctic Outbreak in which the temp dropped to 13 degrees in Jacksonville . That was later surpassed by the great Arctic outbreak in January 1985 when it dropped to 7 degrees in Jax, the all-time minimum temperature record.
December 23-24, 1989 bought me 2 inches of snowfall and the only white Christmas ever experienced here in Jacksonville and a record 53 consecutive hours of temperatures below freezing. The January 2010 outbreak was indeed the last true arctic outbreak to impact the entire peninsula. It has been more than six years now. You have to wonder just when our luck will finally run out with the arctic cold outbreaks coming back to impact us again
.

I'm not sure we ever see that again, at least not in our lifetimes. I'm beginning to see these warmer and warmer winters as a dismaying trend. Global warming is real.