It is rare for snow to fall in Florida. The reason that snow so rarely occurs in this U.S. state is that freezing temperatures in Florida are generally caused by the cold and dry winds of anticyclones. Frost is more common than snow, requiring temperatures of 45°F (7°C) or less at 2 metres (7 ft) above sea level, a cloudless sky, and a relative humidity of 65% or more. In the general case, for snow to occur, the polar jet stream must move southward through Texas and into the Gulf of Mexico, with a stalled cold front across the southern portion of the state curving northeastward to combine freezing air into the frontal clouds. Most of the state is in a rare portion of the continental United States that receives a mean maximum monthly snowfall amount of zero, the only other such areas being southern Texas and parts of California.
Much of the known information on snow in Florida prior to 1900 is from weather climatology provided by the Jacksonville National Weather Service; for this reason, information for other locations is sparse. The earliest recorded instance of snow in Florida was a snowstorm that occurred in 1774; being unaccustomed to snow, some residents called it "extraordinary white rain." The first White Christmas in Jacksonville's history resulted from a snowfall that occurred on December 23, 1989. The most recent occurrence of snow in Florida took place on January 9, 2011, when sleet was reported in the counties of Escambia and Santa Rosa.
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“Thirty—the promise of a decade of loneliness, a thinning list of single men to know, a thinning brief-case of enthusiasm, thinning hair.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“The advice of their elders to young men is very apt to be as unreal as a list of the hundred best books.”
—Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. (1841–1935)
“Father,
you died once,
salted down at fifty-nine,
packed down like a big snow angel,
wasn’t that enough?”
—Anne Sexton (1928–1974)
“Most events recorded in history are more remarkable than important, like eclipses of the sun and moon, by which all are attracted, but whose effects no one takes the trouble to calculate.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“In Florida consider the flamingo,
Its color passion but its neck a question.”
—Robert Penn Warren (1905–1989)