Come On Down

By Norm Dvoskin

I just returned from a vacation in Delray Beach, Florida. I was there for the month of February. In my opinion, the only reason anyone would want to go to Florida other than to visit relatives, is because of the sunny, warm and comfortable winter weather. On the morning of Thursday, February 5^th, my first week, the temperature at Delray Beach dropped to 31 degrees. It was 33 in Boca Raton, Wellington and Palm Beach. People in South Florida are not used to cold weather. They usually wear down-filled parkas and mittens in the frozen food section of the supermarket. Everyone marveled at how empty the beaches were. I put on my "Nanook of the North" outfit and decided it would be a good time to head southward... to Miami, which is about 50 miles from Delray. I was disappointed as I strolled uncomfortably in the cold and wind along Calle Ocho in the Little Havana neighborhood of Miami. The weather warmed up quickly over the next few days, reaching the mid to upper 70s and things were back to normal.

If the chilly weather of 2009 chilled vacationers, it was nothing compared to 32 years ago. On the morning of January 19, 1977, snowflakes fell from the sky in South Florida. It resembled a giant tropical snow globe. It was the first and last time in recorded weather history that snow fell south of Fort Pierce. It was the farthest south that snow ever been seen in the continental United States. Flurries were reported in Homestead. You know your having a tough winter vacation when Miami TV weather reports start giving ski conditions. It was only a dusting but it was enough to close schools and flood the switchboard at Southern Sanitation which jokingly advertises free snow removal. In West Palm Beach, Kmart set out 10 cases of snow shovels and four sleds which had been shipped there by mistake. Residents were inscribing their names on snow-covered windshields. In one up-scale neighborhood of Coral Gables, the highway department made a snow plow by fastening a spatula to the front end of a Porsche (just kidding).

The weather warmed up in a couple of days, and my vacation was delightful. One of nice things about being in Florida in February is that when you get home in March, spring is usually just around the corner. The days are longer, the temperatures are moderating, and the crocuses are starting to pop-up. Ha!  What did I get when I returned to Long Island? Fifteen inches of snow on March 1st... Long Islands biggest snowstorm in three years. I got tired of hearing people say to me, "You came back too early."

Comments

[susan l.rudnick]

dear norm: my daughter and a group of her friends arrived in florida on sunday march ist just in time to avoid the winter snowstorm we were blessed with here in the north east !when she got back to college on monday march 9th she very sweetly asked how much snow we got? i told her that her brother and a friend spent nearly all morning on monday digging our cars out ! and then spent a great part of the afternoon shoveling the sidewalk!she responded like this: :mickey mouse sends his regards!"fondly: susan l.rudnick of amityville