Florida Weather Forecasters Predict Snow!!!
All the local TV weatherpeople in the Tampa Bay area are talking about snow, snow, snow. As I write this, my outdoor thermometer shows 67 degrees. Strange, eh? Not when you realize that the snow and freezing weather they’re predicting is happening in places like Chicago and Minnesota, not Bradenton or Sarasota.
I call this the “Florida Weather Gloat.”
“Today’s high here is going to be 78,” they love to say, “while in Illinois residents are digging out from a snowstorm that has cut off electricity to over 40,000 households. And more snow is on the way in the upper midwest, so this weather emergency is far from over.”
Cut to a shot of two young women in bikinis walking along a white-sand beach, with cute-looking boats bobbing on the ocean in the background.
The message is obvious: “Stop putting up with the cold and glop, people in Illinois. Come here and be warm!”
This message works. Every winter millions of people in the northen parts of this continent do pack up and head for Florida. Some never go back.
Florida has been doing this for a long time. Ditto Southern California. The original purpose of both the Rose Bowl and Orange Bowl college football games was to show off warm weather — girls in bikinis! — to northerners in the middle of winter.
I suppose I’m weather-spoiled, since I grew up in Southern California and now live in Florida. In between, I spent time in Maryland, Massachusetts, and Texas, all of which get snow. And I’m glad I’m back in a sunny, no-snow latitude.
I feel for you, Brethren and Sistren of the Frozen North. I know some of you like snow, and that others feel it’s too hot when your temperature gets above what I consider a chilly winter day (60 degrees F).
I’ll take the sun, myself. I think snow looks great on postcards and on TV. But in real life, I’d just as soon not deal with it, thank you.
December 4th, 2006 at 11:12 am
Tho in the summer, the northerners go all “state of emergency” when the temp tops 95. I was in Chicago a couple Augusts ago and all the news was about how it was hot and going to be even hotter. I think it was around 93 or 94 the days I was there.
December 4th, 2006 at 7:00 pm
Turn about is fair play! Those folks up North get their gloat while we are tying ourselves to anything that wont blow away during hurricane season.
August 13th, 2007 at 3:38 pm
no thanks, no more for me of 9 months per year of roasting Florida humidity, and 3 nice months i prefer the 9 months of temperate Mid-west weather and for that, i can handle 3 months of cold—i just put on a coat!