Snow fell in Miami 45 years ago today. People looked up, and couldn’t believe it… Snow in Miami
The following written content from Miami Herald
Something magical, or looking back now, maybe scary, happened in Miami 45 years ago this week. It snowed.
But maybe this head-scratching event was an early sign of something beginning to go off-kilter with Mother Nature. Back then, the snow in Miami, of course, was headline news. Here’s a story the Miami Herald published on Jan. 19, 2007, written by now-Editorial Board member Luisa Yanez, who reached out and found the then-retired Miami weatherman who issued the unusual forecast to the state.
THE DAY IT SNOWED IN MIAMI Miami weather forecaster Ray Biedinger looked at the screen of his trusty weather radar in the wee hours of Jan. 19, 1977, and dreaded what he had to do. The bitter cold front barreling south across the state during his midnight shift at the old National Weather Service office, then in Coral Gables on South Dixie Highway, left him no choice but to issue one of Miami’s most unusual and historic forecasts: “Cold with rain showers and the possibility of snow, ’’ Biedinger wrote. “If you notice, I didn’t put snow first in that forecast, ’’ Biedinger told the Herald in 2007. But he got it right.
Thirty-seven years ago Sunday, snowflakes briefly dusted tropical palm trees, windshields, and people from Miami to Palm Beach – a freak and brief winter wonderland and the only South Florida snowfall on record in the 20th century.
Shivering South Floridians, young and old, looked to the sky in total amazement as tiny snowflakes landed on their faces. In those early-morning hours, snowflakes fell as far south as Homestead and daytime temperatures for the region dipped into the low 30s. But by 9:30 a.m., South Florida’s big snow show was over, melted by the sun’s rays.
The headline on Miami’s afternoon newspaper, the Miami News, screamed in bold: Snow in Miami! The next day The Miami Herald’s read: The Day It Snowed in Miami. The rare event remains a special memory for those who witnessed it. Hurricanes come and go, but snow in Miami? That’s once in a lifetime.
Many South Floridians missed it – so there were skeptics. Veteran radio disc jockey Rick Shaw tried to set them straight from his radio booth. He played Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas.” He said listeners who didn’t see or feel those fine granules were calling the station and asking why they were playing that song in the middle of January. “Cause it’s snowing outside!” Shaw told them. “It was quite a day.” Snow fell during an eventful week for South Florida – and the United States.
The snow and the low temperatures put Florida’s citrus and vegetable industry in a death grip. Both were nearly wiped out, and about 150,000 migrant workers around the state lost their jobs – including 80,000 in Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties. Then-Gov. Reubin Askew declared a state of emergency. Officially, snow in Miami is not on the weather record books.
“It was an immeasurable amount that fell, so it’s written down as ‘a trace’ of snow, ’’ said Biedinger. Only once before, in 1899, had something resembling snow fallen over South Florida. And not this far south, only down to Fort Pierce. Miami’s snowfall during the Blizzard of 1977 was caused by a combination of two arctic cold fronts – one passed the region on Jan. 16 followed by a second, faster-moving one in the middle of the night the day it snowed. The precipitation formed in the clouds did not have enough time to melt before it reached the ground. If it had happened in the middle of the day, there probably would not have been snow, the weather service said. Read more from MiamiHerald
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