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.