Freezing Temperatures Continue to Plague Florida

It is pretty amazing all the freezing temperatures currently hitting the usually warm weather state of Florida where they are experiencing frost in Miami:

Ordinarily a sunny playground that mocks the rest of winter-suffering America, Miami, Florida, was in sore need of a giant Snuggie on Sunday.

There wasn’t a scantily clad beautiful person at any of the outside tables at South Beach’s tony Balans restaurant. Everyone was crammed inside to assuage their Saturday nights with pancakes and Cuban coffee, chuckling at the heat lamps that waiters had scrambled to put up outdoors.

“Yeah, the lamps were not so good. So we brought inside all the tables to make sure our customers could manage,” said manager Mike Fernandez. “I’m from Chile and living here, you know, it’s not supposed to be like this.”

Temperatures in Miami barely got into the 40s on Sunday; normally, they’d be in the 70s.

Cold is so relative. In Aberdeen, South Dakota, the thermometer registered a low of 31 below zero Sunday. Connecticut officials opened shelters in anticipation of bitter cold. Following a rare snowfall last week in Atlanta, Georgia, temperatures hovered in the teens and drivers lacking snow savvy skidded around very small patches of ice. How is the weather where you are? Share your pictures or video

But the biggest news about the big chill is coming from the northern part of Florida, where a hard freeze watch is in effect, CNN’s meteorologist Bonnie Schneider said. That could be bad news for citrus trees that rarely survive when temperatures remain in the mid-20s or below for four hours or longer, according to Kristen Gunter, a spokeswoman for the association of companies that pick and process the oranges.

Florida citrus is a $9.3 billion industry. The state produces three-quarters of the United States’ orange crop and 40 percent of the world’s orange juice supply.  [CNN]