ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — Tourists bundled up, warming shelters for the homeless opened and growers sprayed crops with water to create protective ice for their plants Friday as sunny Florida shivered through the coldest weather that parts of the state have experienced in more than three years.
The 19 degree Fahrenheit (minus 7.2 Celsius) temperature overnight at Tallahassee International Airport may have made the Sunshine State feel like Green Bay, Wisconsin, but it stopped short of the record 16 F (minus 8.9 C) almost a century ago, according to Mark Wool, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service in Tallahassee.
“It’s cold, but it’s not all that unusual to have cold weather this time of the year,” Wool said Friday.
There was even more un-Florida-like weather predicted for the weekend with the National Weather Service putting the chances for snow in the Panhandle early Sunday at between 20% and 30%. The snow was predicted to be less than an inch (2.5 centimeters) in the western Panhandle but not expected to impact travel because of a short duration and an expected quick rise in temperatures afterward, Wool said.
That would make it a far cry from the 5 inches (12.7 centimeters) of snow that fell on Pensacola almost exactly a year ago.
“The reasonably worst-case scenario is an inch since the window is only two or three hours,” Wool said of Sunday’s forecast. “But all of that will melt away when it warms up.”
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Temperatures on Saturday were expected to warm up to more Sunshine State-like weather before dipping again Sunday and Monday. The thermometer was expected to be a cool-for-Miami mid-50s F (12.7 C) during Monday night’s college football championship game between Indiana and Miami at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens.
The central part of Florida on Friday experienced some of the coldest weather it has seen in more than three years as lows dipped to the mid-20s F (minus 3.8 C), according to the National Weather Service.
In the theme park hub of Orlando, where the thermometer fell to right at freezing overnight, water parks such as Typhoon Lagoon at Walt Disney World were closed Friday. The water park also planned to be closed at the beginning of next week because of the predicted frigid weather, Disney said in an email.
In Plant City, which bills itself as the winter strawberry capital of the world, growers used sprinklers to spray strawberry plants and ornamental plants with water that formed a protective ice as the overnight temperature went as low as 28 F (minus 2.2 C). The ice kept the plants’ temperatures from going below freezing. Plant City is about 20 miles (32 kilometers) east of Tampa.
In northeast Florida, potato growers covered their crops with extra soil to protect against the freezing weather.
There were no widespread problems reported with any crops in Florida, said Christina Morton, director of communications for the Florida Fruit & Vegetable Association, a growers’ trade association.
“Florida is well into its winter season for fruit and vegetables, so the timing for this cold snap was not ideal,” Morton said in an email. “The good news is things warmed up quickly this morning, and despite the wintry conditions, harvesting continued across much of the state today.”
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