and why each one will save your bacon. and bromeliads.
Uh oh. You’re looking at a forecast that predicts “will feel like 31°.”
And your new neighbors and the local media are running in tight circles, panicked jazz fingers overhead, chanting “Prepare for the freeze-aster”.
I know. You think: “I’ll never be that person: wearing coat and hat; chin tucked against the brutal (eye roll) elements of Florida.”
Oh, sad, silly transplant…. (like me). I get it.
Because, it doesn’t matter that your prior life included years – nay, decades – of mucking out stalls in an old, stone cow-barn in just your shirt-sleeves, working up a sweat, despite temps well below freezing.
It doesn’t matter a whit that you’ve plunged deep into May’s frigid snow-runoff at Bash Bish Falls – and added strawberries of frozen blood vessels, which are still rosy round-about your person 40-years later, thanks to that master tattoo artist, Mother Nature.
(For fun. You did this for fun.)
Or lets’ say you lived-the-chilly in Stanley, ID. Or Tug Hill, upstate New York. Or Duluth, MN. You know what it is to draw in sub-zero air and play ‘freeze your nostrils closed; get to the office and crack the ice in your recently washed hair.
Secret, guilty pleasures.
I hear you: below 10° is cold. But 40°? That’s spring fever. Get those shorts on!
But that internal thermostat isn’t going to last in Florida.
I can’t say why. But I know from experience it just doesn’t.
Forty-eight hours ago it was 84°, but tonight it’s going to down to 39° / windchill 31°.
Even the dog is shivering. (But cute, no?)
You too, need to embrace the wild-weather-reactionary-stance. Don’t worry about what your old posse might think. Your new machismo/femchismo will flex its muscles when it’s 105° and you’re power-washing the driveway at high noon.
So tonight, use your time indoors to bookmark these websites.
My four go-to’s are:
- WeatherBug Useful for: hourly forecasts, radar maps, and lightning mapping in real time. Never sass the lightning in Florida.
- Wunderground Useful for: hyperlocal conditions (and Florida is all about the hyperlocal). This one offers an easy look in the rearview, including precipitation and wind gusts so you’ll be sure to know
- how much water the plants are already getting, before you pay for more
- you were not being dramatic. It was practically a hurricane over here.
- Willyweather Useful for the local tides, swells and surf conditions at your favorite beaches and intracoastal waterways.
- National Weather Service The responsible, grown-up in the room. Forecasts without the hype, with lots of access to information like drought index (wildfire season) and flood levels (rainy season). Also big shout-out that the safety information kept coming, even during the shutdown, when people were waiting hard on a paycheck.
In June you’ll need to add the National Hurricane Center; but that’s for another post.
And all offer great apps as well — so load up that smart phone.
And go dig out that bag of mittens.
Cold Florida 