florida 2025-2026 Florida Winter

[Palmarum]

-slowly begins to uncover and unpack the more-tolerant plants-

No instant damage yet, but I can see discoloration on my Heliconia 'Jacquinii' so I know it's coming. It bore the brunt of the wind. Time will tell on other items. Let sun and air into the garage later today with a nine-degree change. Wind changes direction tomorrow, so warmer morning in the 50sF. Another low 40sF morning on Friday but a quick warm up afterwards. Found another iguana. Also noticed the eerie lack of animal activity.

Another problem is the extreme dryness. I am trying to water where I can. 

Ryan

[kinzyjr]

My minimums were between 30F-31F throughout the yard.  The minimum I see from KLAL is 28.4F at 6:50AM.  I recently received word from the staff at Hollis that the garden took a pretty good hit, so expect to see some damage if you're coming to Plantae-palooza to restock on the cheap later this month.  I added the ZIP file with all of the airport records from the NWS here as well as on the screenshots thread.  I took a look at the Dew Point for the worst part of the freeze - 8.6F!

Hourly Records for this morning - part of the attached ZIP:

 

Dew Point:

20260203_obhistory.zip

[Kiplin]

8 hours ago, Merlyn said:

@Kiplin if the lower part of the spear is still green I'd mark it horizontally against a nearby frond with a sharpie.  That way you can see if it's pushing growth next week.  As long as it keeps moving then the bud is alive.  Don't cut anything off or give up until it's stationary for several weeks straight.  Some stuff might not really grow until well into March.  Likewise if the leaflets are dead but the frond stem (rachis and/or petiole) is still green then don't cut it off.  For recovery any palm will need nutrients, and anything green still provides nutrients.

My treatment for bud rot is a big squirt of hydrogen peroxide, followed up later with Daconil.  I got that from other people on PalmTalk and it's been pretty effective.  Another PT'er said to use Mancozeb on crown rots.  Halley said this was very effective on his Alfredii seedlings.  I've bought some but haven't tried it yet.

For some of your palms, this is my experience from repeated 27-30F frosts and one night at 24.4F with frost:

• Pembana, Lutescens, Christmas, Macrocarpa and K.O. (now changed to C.O.) - all had problems with crown/bud rot after cold fronts.  They did ok with defoliation and recovery, but some caught a bud rot and died.  Pembana and Lutescens I lost trunks out of the cluster but most of the time they grew back.  I did lose one big Pembana cluster from upper trunk rot (likely Thielaviopsis).
• Archontophoenix - Most grew back from defoliation in the upper 20s, with one Tuckeri surviving 24.4F + frost and still growing fine.  Hopefully these are "bud hardy" even if they get defoliated.
• Royal - I've seen these get torched in Lake Mary/Sanford and grow a new frond a few weeks later.  Maybe these are "leaf wimpy" but "bud hardy?"
• Buccaneer - very tough.  I lost a small one to a random summer bud rot, unrelated to cold.  Otherwise tough to 20?
• Areca Vestiaria - now that's unusual.  Most Areca are absolute wimps to cold.  If that survives 26F at your place I need to plant one here!!!

Some stuff that was a sickly olive green has turned crispy brown today.  For sure it'll be bonfire time in a few weeks...

Thanks for all this info! I'll be applying some hydrogen peroxide and hoping for the best!!

[JeskiM]

North central Florida has a long and rich history of recurrent extreme cold snaps.    Take Volusia county as an example.  Extreme freezes were recorded back quite a ways :

Jan. 2nd 1766 -- The ground was frozen to an inch in depth along the St. John River.  This wiped out the entire citrus crop in the area. 

Feb. 8th 1835 -- The St. John River froze 50+ feet out from the shores as the temp went into the single digits.  Ocala (Ft. King then) hit 11 degrees. Fruit trees were wiped out from South Carolina and Georgia southwards. It was said that fruit trees were "destroyed, roots and all" as far south as the 28th parallel, which would include Tampa Bay on the west coast and Cape Canaveral on the east coast.

Again they got hit in 1857 and 1866.

The 1870s were pretty rough.  with a severe freezes in 1873, 1876, 19879, and 1880.

1886 is another notable freeze. The temps dipped into the teens.

1894 - 1895 was the next big freeze.  And again in 1898 where it dropped from 78 degrees to 18 degrees with freezes for 4 straight days.

Then there was a 17 year stretch before the next weak freeze of 1916.  After that it was mild but some hard freezes in 1962, 1983, and 1985, and of course 1989.  

That's 200 years worth of heavy impact freezing which repeatedly set back the citrus industry in the area.

Spoken communications (recorded in Spaniard documents) with the Seminole Indian tribe, when the Spaniards kicked off planting citrus into north Florida, records a few instances where the indians were perplexed that the spaniards were attempting to plant those crops in the area.  This indicates that recurrent  cold snaps have been known by the indians to be very routine in the likely hundreds of years prior to the 1700s.

Going into the future :

Florida is geographically south of an area that has an abundance of cold air (Canada and the arctic above that). The Appalachians is the only physical barrier to cold air heading south.  It's a better barrier than we have in Texas as the only barrier to our north is barbed-wire fences and that does nothing. Northern florida is not as protected by water as southern florida is, and it sits several degree further north. Climatologically it sits within the outer envelope of the long Gaussian cold tail (as do all the states that border the Gulf of Mexico).  Deep south FL is in the short non-Gaussian cold tail and would require an extreme event and an abormal setup where low level blocking occurs just to the east of florida and cold air advection comes almost straight south down the center of the state and pools. 

Basically this climatology will not change much over time.  A warmer earth will not eradicate extreme cold snaps, unless and until it could melt the poles and Greenland.  I would continue to expect periodic deep freezes with temperatures similar to recent history (since the end of the little ice age).  Maybe the periodicity changes as large scale processes such as ENSO and PDO continue to oscillate back and forth.  Yes, those are in the Pacific ocean but they affect circulation thousands of miles downstream. This past year PDO has been the deepest negative it's ever been and is likely to flip in the next decade or so.  With it, ENSO will likely go back to a state where El  Nino events are seen more frequently.    But, until the Polar areas completely melt away; not likely in the next few generations of humans, then the threat of cold snaps will continue. 

Ok, I will step off away from the keyboard now .... I originally planned to only reply about the past freeze events, but my history as meteorologist kicked in.

-Matt

[KsLouisiana]

9 hours ago, Xenon said:

The January 2025 snowstorm that nuked Louisiana through to the western FL Panhandle was pretty similar. 

Hey Jonathan! So it was crazy cold as you remember in 2025 in Louisiana...didn't have a clue it could actually get that cold here. Absolutely mind blowing. But 2021 was way worse for palms and other tropicals. Have you noticed that? I don't think I saw one robusta that died last year. Nothing like 2021 in Louisiana and Texas. It makes yoy realize absolute low temp is not as big of a factor as I would think.

[ruskinPalms]

I think it bottomed out around 32 this morning with frost. Palms are starting to show some cold damage and cold stress.  C. macrocarpa is looking pretty beat up which stinks because it is not fast palm for me. I don’t think it will die though. I think it will do better in the future as it gains some height. Those nice wide leaflets are a great place for frost to form unfortunately. 

[RedRabbit]

16 hours ago, Looking Glass said:

For the overnight of Feb 1st:

South Florida is protected by a lot of nearby water and the Gulf Stream.   The all time record low for Brownsville TX is 12F and for Miami and Fort Lauderdale is 28F, both records in the distant past.   We bottomed out at 35F, or so, for maybe an hour in the AM here this time.  The predominant plants are quite tropical here, and at those temps, some did take damage, though not severe.  
 

(Jensen Beach, FL hit 29F for this event)

I’ve argued a few times that the Gulf Stream isn’t helpful when there is a land breeze. Miami stayed warm because of the urban heat island (and partially because it is so far south.) Miami Beach stayed warmer because it has the same urban heat island, but also have the benefit of Biscayne Bay (cold air had to cross it.) Where the intercoastal is narrow in South Florida there’s actually not much protection. Where the Gulf Stream helped, if at all, was keeping Biscayne Bay relatively warm.

[FlaPalmLover]

I guess your generic tropical palms will always be a risk for those living in Central Florida. Those who live in South Florida can just pick up any old palm and know it's probably safe in their climate for years to come, whereas someone in Central Florida could easily lose their Christmas palm or foxtail when a bad cold front hits. For many it may start to make more sense to double down on rare, hardy palms like copernicia and beccariophoenix even though they're slow growing and harder to acquire. Then again, if you don't mind swapping out coconut palms every 5-15 years, it's not a huge deal losing one to the odd cold front. I would personally rather not live in a tropical climate, so I'm not sure the palm-growing benefits of living in South Florida would really be worth it for me.

[CodyORB]

4 hours ago, kinzyjr said:

My minimums were between 30F-31F throughout the yard.  The minimum I see from KLAL is 28.4F at 6:50AM.  I recently received word from the staff at Hollis that the garden took a pretty good hit, so expect to see some damage if you're coming to Plantae-palooza to restock on the cheap later this month.  I added the ZIP file with all of the airport records from the NWS here as well as on the screenshots thread.  I took a look at the Dew Point for the worst part of the freeze - 8.6F!

Hourly Records for this morning - part of the attached ZIP:

 

Dew Point:

20260203_obhistory.zip 672.31 kB · 0 downloads

Lakeland fared a lot better than I thought it would, given how far inland it is and Orlando seeing below 25F even within the heat island.

I think the strong onshore winds from the west coast saved the day (even though, the advective nature of the freeze made it so much worse for other parts of Florida). Blessing and a curse.

[Looking Glass]

1 hour ago, RedRabbit said:

I’ve argued a few times that the Gulf Stream isn’t helpful when there is a land breeze. Miami stayed warm because of the urban heat island (and partially because it is so far south.) Miami Beach stayed warmer because it has the same urban heat island, but also have the benefit of Biscayne Bay (cold air had to cross it.) Where the intercoastal is narrow in South Florida there’s actually not much protection. Where the Gulf Stream helped, if at all, was keeping Biscayne Bay relatively warm.

True.  Gulf Stream isn’t going to help if the air above is being blasted out to sea.   Anywhere right near the coast in FL helps in general.  But you don’t really have to worry about cold too much down here in SE FL anyways, unless you are growing Cyrtostachys renda / true tropical rainforest type stuff.  This was a historic event.  I turned the heat on in the house for the first time ever living here, when indoor temps hit 65F…. I’ve never done that in 15+ years, and many people at work said the same thing….  The rest have still never turned on the heat before, or don’t even have heat in their home, just AC.  Still, some tropical bushes and bromeliads growing in the yard took some cosmetic damage, as they normally will around 40F usually.  Starting tomorrow most days this month will be around 75 degrees, except for a couple.  

Not sure what exact sensor this tracks:

 

[ahosey01]

5 hours ago, JeskiM said:

North central Florida has a long and rich history of recurrent extreme cold snaps.    Take Volusia county as an example.  Extreme freezes were recorded back quite a ways :

Jan. 2nd 1766 -- The ground was frozen to an inch in depth along the St. John River.  This wiped out the entire citrus crop in the area. 

Feb. 8th 1835 -- The St. John River froze 50+ feet out from the shores as the temp went into the single digits.  Ocala (Ft. King then) hit 11 degrees. Fruit trees were wiped out from South Carolina and Georgia southwards. It was said that fruit trees were "destroyed, roots and all" as far south as the 28th parallel, which would include Tampa Bay on the west coast and Cape Canaveral on the east coast.

Again they got hit in 1857 and 1866.

The 1870s were pretty rough.  with a severe freezes in 1873, 1876, 19879, and 1880.

1886 is another notable freeze. The temps dipped into the teens.

1894 - 1895 was the next big freeze.  And again in 1898 where it dropped from 78 degrees to 18 degrees with freezes for 4 straight days.

Then there was a 17 year stretch before the next weak freeze of 1916.  After that it was mild but some hard freezes in 1962, 1983, and 1985, and of course 1989.  

That's 200 years worth of heavy impact freezing which repeatedly set back the citrus industry in the area.

Spoken communications (recorded in Spaniard documents) with the Seminole Indian tribe, when the Spaniards kicked off planting citrus into north Florida, records a few instances where the indians were perplexed that the spaniards were attempting to plant those crops in the area.  This indicates that recurrent  cold snaps have been known by the indians to be very routine in the likely hundreds of years prior to the 1700s.

Going into the future :

Florida is geographically south of an area that has an abundance of cold air (Canada and the arctic above that). The Appalachians is the only physical barrier to cold air heading south.  It's a better barrier than we have in Texas as the only barrier to our north is barbed-wire fences and that does nothing. Northern florida is not as protected by water as southern florida is, and it sits several degree further north. Climatologically it sits within the outer envelope of the long Gaussian cold tail (as do all the states that border the Gulf of Mexico).  Deep south FL is in the short non-Gaussian cold tail and would require an extreme event and an abormal setup where low level blocking occurs just to the east of florida and cold air advection comes almost straight south down the center of the state and pools. 

Basically this climatology will not change much over time.  A warmer earth will not eradicate extreme cold snaps, unless and until it could melt the poles and Greenland.  I would continue to expect periodic deep freezes with temperatures similar to recent history (since the end of the little ice age).  Maybe the periodicity changes as large scale processes such as ENSO and PDO continue to oscillate back and forth.  Yes, those are in the Pacific ocean but they affect circulation thousands of miles downstream. This past year PDO has been the deepest negative it's ever been and is likely to flip in the next decade or so.  With it, ENSO will likely go back to a state where El  Nino events are seen more frequently.    But, until the Polar areas completely melt away; not likely in the next few generations of humans, then the threat of cold snaps will continue. 

Ok, I will step off away from the keyboard now .... I originally planned to only reply about the past freeze events, but my history as meteorologist kicked in.

-Matt

I have a book that I have been reading about the early settlers in the Spanish colony of Nuevo Santander - now the line along basically from Laredo / Nuevo Laredo to Brownsville / Matamoros.  This book has nothing whatsoever to do with weather.  There are maybe 10 sentences in the first 10 chapters dedicated to weather - most describing the kind of living you would eke out in a xeric environment as a frontier settler.

One brief passage, however, describes the earliest settlers heading to the Rio Grande in the 1750s somewhere around modern day Roma by citing their travel journals.  As it turns out they had to hold their party in tents for nearly a week because of a blizzard that prohibited their travels further to the river.  That would place them somewhere in modern day Tamaulipas in a f***ing blizzard.  Man how times have changed.

[MarcusH]

4 hours ago, ahosey01 said:

I have a book that I have been reading about the early settlers in the Spanish colony of Nuevo Santander - now the line along basically from Laredo / Nuevo Laredo to Brownsville / Matamoros.  This book has nothing whatsoever to do with weather.  There are maybe 10 sentences in the first 10 chapters dedicated to weather - most describing the kind of living you would eke out in a xeric environment as a frontier settler.

One brief passage, however, describes the earliest settlers heading to the Rio Grande in the 1750s somewhere around modern day Roma by citing their travel journals.  As it turns out they had to hold their party in tents for nearly a week because of a blizzard that prohibited their travels further to the river.  That would place them somewhere in modern day Tamaulipas in a f***ing blizzard.  Man how times have changed.

Cold events in Central Florida and below are rare and aren't as severe and common compared to Texas ,where we literally can drop a zone and a half over night.  

If you look at data from history,  the record low temperatures were even colder .  Probably some gardeners who witnessed the 1980s freezes are still brand marked up to this date. 

Freezes are a natural occurrence ,  some places get hit more than others but they're also beneficial for the environment by killing off invasive pests.  

 

 

[kinzyjr]

Overnight lows this morning were 38F-39F here in my little slice of paradise.  KLAL recorded a minimum of 37.8F overnight around 2:15AM.  When the official records are ready from the CDO, it will be interesting to see how the records in those downloads match up with the hourly records referenced.  Sometimes there are hourly records that get purged by quality control (ex. a 28F during the 2022 freezes was pushed out).  A day of warmth, maybe some rain for @SubTropicRay, then another cold front on tap.

8 hours ago, CodyORB said:

Lakeland fared a lot better than I thought it would, given how far inland it is and Orlando seeing below 25F even within the heat island.

I think the strong onshore winds from the west coast saved the day (even though, the advective nature of the freeze made it so much worse for other parts of Florida). Blessing and a curse.

When this freeze first popped up on the forecast, we were supposed to get off fairly light vs. our neighbors in Orlando because we were outside of that nasty wind.  Roughly 2 days before the freeze, that changed and we knew we were going to take just as hard a hit.

[Hombre de Palmas]

25, 24°F on consecutive nights. I had understood that the all-time low here was 23°F. Our weather station is at 10FT because my wife wanted it to better catch the wind, but I don't think that would affect the reading too much.  The Port Saint Lucie area is pretty ugly and will be for awhile. I am waiting for my Adonidias and Wodyetias to succumb. Too old to start again...a young man's game. But at least I got enough left in me to clean up the mess and right-size the yard. There will be TONS of lawn waste to be picked up over the next several months although I fear many residents won't even bother. I am looking at three large coconuts across the street that will probably be there for ages. 

This bomb cyclone efficiently funneled the cold air right over this area. We received little to no benefit from our geography as compared to more northern and inland locations.  To add insult to injury the NWS is now calling  for YET ANOTHER frost here Thursday night. We saved a lot of potted stuff by filling our garage for three nights and I'm not doing that again!

Such is life.

 

[JLM]

14 hours ago, JeskiM said:

Spoken communications (recorded in Spaniard documents) with the Seminole Indian tribe, when the Spaniards kicked off planting citrus into north Florida, records a few instances where the indians were perplexed that the spaniards were attempting to plant those crops in the area.

Sounds like me when people plant mature adonidia merillii as a landscaping focal point up here near Pensacola.

[HudsonBill]

Crazy how the west coast of florida was barely affected beyond normal temps. These coconuts are in new port richey in pasco county well north of tampa. Untouched. There use to be a massive mango tree on the property aswell the trunk was 2ft in diameter or bigger tree was massive. They cut it down. No idea why. 

 

I took this picture 30 min ago. These are growing further north than people say is possible but here they are and still look amazing after all this winter has thrown at them. 

[JeskiM]

2 hours ago, JLM said:

Sounds like me when people plant mature adonidia merillii as a landscaping focal point up here near Pensacola.

Lol.  Like it or not,  I think that almost 100% of the population of this board (outside of the tropics) are "zone pushers" to some degree ... I know I am.  I have a tiny Bismarkia planted that I have to protect 3-4 times a year).  I can get more years out of it, till it gets too big.

It's a gamble that sometimes can hold good for a decade or two, then you get burned in the course of one night. 

I just decided to keep on trucking as long as my finances or interests allow it.  

- Matt