Question about Central Florida Freezes?

[EDR1222]

I was just wondering if anyone has any insight about significant hard freezes that have occured deep into Florida. Looking at history, there were intense freezes in January of 1970, January of 1977, January of 1982, December of 1983, January of 1985, and December of 1989. Living here in Central Florida my whole life, I can't recall anything significant occuring after that historic Christmas freeze of 89. There has been a day here and a day there where we have seen one night of temperatures where it has dipped below freezing for a couple of hours, but nothing to compare to those freezes. Has it been an unusually long period of time ( 15 years ) for this area to go without a hard freeze event? Just wondering what anyone else might have to say about this.

Thanks,
Ed

[Cookiely]

I don't remember any in recent memory. The last one I remember was I believe Christmas day night but I can't remember the year. It got so cold the pump froze, the heater went caput and we were miserable for a couple of weeks. It might have been in 1989. When I was young I know we had some terrible freezes that killed a lot of the guava trees, mangos and avocado trees in Tampa. My grandfather lost half his avocado tree and that side never recovered or gave fruit again.

[Windswept]

I'm certain it was 1989. My daughter was 8 months old, our power went out and we kept warm by sitting in the car with the heater running for 30 minute increments until the power was restored. Then there were brownouts all day long - tough to cook a turkey that way

[recmod]

I remember the Christmas 1989 freeze very well. The low in Orlando on the 23rd was 24 degrees, with an afternoon warm-up to just 42 degrees. Christmas Eve was even colder, with a low of 22, and a high of just 37 degrees F. The 23rd was cloudy and blustery and we even got some light snow in the afternoon! I remember leaving my retail job to go to lunch around 3pm and it was snowing! The ground was too warm for the snow to stick, but it did build up a bit on the cars. By that night, when the store I worked at closed, we found that all the car door-locks had frozen! In order to unlock the doors, we had to heat the car key with a lighter. When I got home, my water pipes had frozen and I feared they would burst (luckily they did not).

While we in Central Florida have not had a severe freeze since, there have been some quite cold snaps. January 2002 saw a freeze in Central Florida. Orlando recorded a low of 25 on the ninth; Daytona was 28 the same morning. January 2003 saw another freeze. This time, Orlando recorded a low of 27 on the 24th, and only warmed to 43 that afternoon. Daytona was even colder, reporting a low of 25 degrees the same morning, with an afternoon high of just 37 degrees. The thing that separates these freezes from the monster freezes of the '80s is the duration of the cold event. The recent freezes only lasted a single morning, while some of the earlier events took place on several nights in succession, compounding the damage.

--Lou

[Wacahootaman]

Up here in Wacahoota, we still aint gots a good freeze yet dis year.

Skeeters been real bad since de Hurricanes and ifin we doan gets some good freezin, deys gonna hatch out real bad dis spring.

Best time of de year is wen it gets real warm in late winter wif everythin greenin up and no skeeters.

The big hatch is usually round mid April but wif a warm winter dey will stay round all winter and come on strong early