Florida Weather

[NDG]

Officially snow flurries at KJAX, wow! Ocean effect?

KJAX observed 08 January 2015 19:56 UTC
Temperature: 3.3°C (38°F)
Dewpoint: -1.7°C (29°F) [RH = 70%]
Pressure (altimeter): 30.45 inches Hg (1031.2 mb)
[Sea-level pressure: 1031.2 mb]
Winds: from the N (10 degrees) at 15 MPH (13 knots; 6.8 m/s)
Visibility: 8 miles (13 km)
Ceiling: 2200 feet AGL
Clouds: broken clouds at 2200 feet AGL
broken clouds at 4500 feet AGL
overcast cloud deck at 20000 feet AGL

[northjaxpro]

Yeah, NDG, what a nice little surprise today with the very light flurries. There are still a few flying around currently at my home locale. Definitely ocean effect for sure.

[NDG]

That is a very rare event, enough of a cold wedge stayed in the Jax at the surface while winds above the surface brought in some of moisture off the Atlantic.
Temps are in the mid 30s in Jax, you drive one hour south and temps warm up into the 50s.

[northjaxpro]

That is a very rare event, enough of a cold wedge stayed in the Jax at the surface while winds above the surface brought in some of moisture off the Atlantic.
Temps are in the mid 30s in Jax, you drive one hour south and temps warm up into the 50s.

That is right NDG. The daytime high at my locale only reached 38.3 degrees. The temperatures are now back down to 36.4 degrees currently. Temps dropped a couple of degrees since the flurries began a couple of hours ago. What a day it has been here today. One good thing is that the clouds will hold our temps up tonight to just above the freeze mark hopefully. I don't expect much of a temperature drop unless evaporative cooling, which would lead to other issues we don't want lol.. Dew point currently is 28.

I'll check back in a bit later.

[gatorcane]

and several hundred miles down the coast in SE Florida, we saw temps topping out in the low 70s today with periods of sunshine too. Just shows the power of the warm Gulf stream current which can take brutally cold and dry arctic air and modify it that much. In fact lows across the SE Florida coast will be in the low to mid 60s tonight as the strong East winds bring in the modified air, while lows across north Florida will be some 30F+ degrees colder.

[boca]

Northjaxpro do you have some video of the snow flurries? I would like to trade places with you just for the day.

[northjaxpro]

It happened so quickly that I personally did not video it, but here are some videos in and around metro Jax sent in from viewers when the flurries were flying this afternoon from First Coast News.com, TV-12 and ABC 25 in Jacksonville.


http://www.firstcoastnews.com/story/wea ... /21451831/



They were flying around for nearly 2 hours earlier this afternoon. It was a nice, unexpected treat for us in Jax today.

[FireRat]

That is awesome North Jax Pro, I would also trade places with you to experience that true winter feeling!

It is just tough to get real cold spells down here, has to be perfectly NW advection with no northeast component whatsoever around these parts. Who knows when we'll see a flurry in South Florida ever again, was 53 around 8 AM, then quickly warmed up to 69 in my locale for a high before clouds moved in off the northeast along with spotty showers. It's 60 right now with a drizzle.

[northjaxpro]

Well, it was a very interesting yesterday for sure. The arctic spell dropped through yestday and bought us snow flurries and max temps only in the upper 30s. The stratocumuulous deck that was responsible for the flurries yesterday have done exactly what I hoped would happen overnight, and that is spare us another freeze. Temps have been steady or very slowly rising since about 7:00 last night. We have stayed in the mid 30s all night, and currently it is 37.6 degrees at my home locale. Today will be another chilly day, but nothing like yesterday. Max temps today will climb through the 40s for the duration of today and if the clouds can thin out more today and allow for some sun, temps should reach at least into the lower 50s.

Looking at the models, it does appear that the SJT looks to get cranked up in the coming days. Rain chances to increase over the weekend and temps will slowly moderate as well. A Low Pressure systems looks toi develop across the Western GOM on Sunday and that will keep rain chances going into the early part of next week. Looking farther out a week from now, models are hinting at a potential storm developing along the U.S. Eastern Seaboard and another potential deep and digging Upper Level Trough developing over the Eastern CONUS. This could bring another arctic cold spell our way. The key word is could. This is something just to monitor about a week oiut. Have a great day everyone.

[gatorcane]

Current graphic of temps at 1pm EST. South Florida continues to be much warmer than the rest of the state with a noticeable temp gradient even when compared to Central Florida with temps in the mid 50s.

[StormingB81]

It feels colder than the mid 50s...LOL but I worked outside all day so that may have something to do with it.

[NDG]

The shallow "colder" air is taking longer to clear central FL, but no complaints, it could been a lot worst had the core of the Arctic air penetrated deeper into central and S Florida. Back to the 70s and even 80s from Sunday into mid week before a cool down by the end of next week.

[northjaxpro]

This suface analysis tells the story. Large, elongated 1037mb modified Arctic HP is in control of the Eastern CONUS, providing a shallow cold layer at the surface across the region, ridging from the Ohio Valley southwestward to Texas. The orientation of the HP dome continues to give the Florida peninsula a decent northeasterly flow at the surface and this will continue into much of this weekend.

[gatorcane]

The shallow arctic air mass has been very slow to move out of West-Central Florida. Still a pretty significant difference in temps and dewpoints between West-Central Florida and SE Florida:

[psyclone]

it's chilly here...but nice...and the warm air will be surging back tomorrow and hang around for a bit before the cool (but at this point not cold) air returns late week. FWIW the 6-10 day shows below normal for central and northern fl and normal south fl but with the northland above normal the prospects for a big freezing blast appear nil. the 8-14 day shows normal. we're tip toeing through the most hazardous time of the year (freeze wise) with not a scratch. Tampa should get a few freezes per year and we haven't had one in several years with none so far this season and none in sight.

[northjaxpro]

So far, only six freezes have been measured at my locale this Fall/Winter as of today. Generally the Jax area averages about 15 freezes in an average winter season. There have had a few more freezes over across the Big Bend region and the panhandle so far this season. However, as a whole, especially for areas along and south of the I-4 corridor and down to South Florida, so far it has been as good as it gets for escaping Old Man Winter. As long as the NAO doesn't dip significantly negative, that will continue to bode well for you all down in the central and southern peninsula for the most part. For me, I think this week I have had my fill of winter weather. I experienced a hard freeze, wind chill in the teens and a 90 minute period of ocean effect snow flurries back on Thursday. For a native North Floridian like me, that will do it for the winter for me.

But, I realize we still have a bit more winter left and more likely we will get several more opportunites to get freezes here in my neck of the woods. But, I don't want to see severe freezes to impact the peninsula as a whole like as to what happened in December '83, January '85 or December '89. That is too extreme for us, so count our blessings as a whole for living in the beautiful Sunshine State!

[NDG]

What a difference 5 years make, on this day Orlando woke up to a record 29 degrees, on the 12th officially we bottomed down to 27 deg F.
We saw 7 days of subfreezing temps in in the first 12 days of the year. Miami got down to 35 (with three mornings in a row in the 30s), Tampa 25 degrees, Tallahassee 15 degrees and Jacksonville 20 degrees.
That year the strong negative NAO regime returned in December giving FL the coldest month on record. That year I lost one small mango tree and 2 young Royal Palm trees I had just planted.

Here's a quote from the USA newspaper article that day:

The cold, swept in on an arctic front from Canada, is extremely tough on fruit and vegetable crops. It was below 28 degrees more than 8 hours in the agriculture-dominated area around Lake Okeechobee, twice the length of time qualifying for a damaging "hard freeze."

Cold temperatures aren't entirely unheard of in Florida, but it's unusual for them to linger this long. Gregoria said Monday was the 10th consecutive day of lows under 50 degrees in South Florida, just shy of a record of 13 days set in 1940.

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/weather/ ... cold_N.htm

From the NY Times:



http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/14/us/14 ... .html?_r=0

[northjaxpro]

Good morning NDG. Yeah good read above. Mother Nature has really overall been very good to Florida in terms of extremes. You pointed out very well above that it has been more than 5 years since we have had a prolonged period of cold across the entire peninsula. On the other extreme, we are really on an incredible streak of now approaching 10 years since a major hurricane has impacted the Florida peninsula.

Now, I know we have discussed this at length in the past, but I tell you to go that long without either extreme occuring, especially the 10 year period without an impact from a major hurricane, is just absolutely incredible.

Well, to say that we have been extremely fortunate is the ultimate understatement. We have been extremely fortunate for having a neutral/positive NAO during winter for the last five years. More importantly, the patterns we have had that would be potentially harmful to Florida in winter has occured during the tropical season. We have seen frequent and rather strong upper level troughs to come down across the Eastern CONUS to effectly recurve tropical cyclones away from Florida, the Gulf Coast and the Eastern seaboard during this 10 year period. We have had it very good on both extremes.

Our luck eventually will run out sad to say. Mother Nature always balances things out, and as great as it has been for us, it is just a matter of time before Mother Nature unleashes her fury. We are blessed to have enjoyed the long respite from the severe cold and hurricane impacts. But, definitely, we are on borrowed time for sure concerning Mother Nature regarding these particular extremes!

[gatorcane]

well-said northjaxpro. We have been very fortunate here in Florida the last 10 years for sure. Regarding the hurricanes, I wonder if the active period Florida saw in the 20-40s where SE Florida saw a major hurricane on average every two years or so will return. Note this is not a typo as SE Florida was hit by a MAJOR hurricane on average every two years during those 30 years if you count up the number of major hurricanes over that timeframe taking 30 and dividing it by that number as some years saw multiple hits from majors. Just think of the impact to Florida should we get into this type of pattern again?

Here is an article which discusses:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense ... o_far.html

Regarding the cold for Florida, it does seem to have been a while as Jan 2010 was the last time we saw a damaging freeze deep into the peninsula of Florida. One thing I am seeing with the long-range models is a potential major long-wave pattern shift across North America come last week of this month that looks to usher in another widespread arctic outbreak event fort the lower 48 east of the rockies. Question is how will the NAO look and could this outbreak be the one to finally cause freezes for many across peninsula Florida?

[StormingB81]

Well I had over 5 inches of rain here today....WOW