Preparing for a Florida Winter

Many of us moved to Florida to get away from winter weather. We can watch weather reports from up North of snow, ice and cold and chuckle to ourselves as we look outside at our sunny and pleasant January days. Well, we don’t get off that easy. While snow and ice are rare, we get our share of inclement weather in the winter too.
If you live near the water, it’s rare to see a freeze. Rare, but not impossible. At least once or twice a season, even the coast may have temperatures near freezing. The warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico usually keep the beach just warm enough to keep freezing temperatures away. The farther away you are from the water, the more likely you will see a freeze. Most of the time, it’s just a brief freeze and not something that poses a threat to your pipes or pool pump. It’s the plants that suffer. And since we live in a tropical climate, our plants really don’t handle cold well.
Most experts say covering your plants with burlap when a frost or freeze is expected is best. I don’t have a lot of burlap laying around the house, so a sheet works too. Just remember, if you use plastic, you have to get that off the plants quickly after sunrise or they could get fried from our Florida sunshine. It’s still pretty strong in the Winter.
Something many people don’t know, the air temperature you see on TV probably isn’t the same temperature at your house. The surface of your patio, lawn or roof may cool much faster than the air temperature cools, so it can easily be several degrees colder on your windshield or your plants than your thermometer is showing. When in doubt, just cover them anyway. That’s why you may still have to scrape your windshield in the morning when we are saying the temperature is above freezing.
Now, if we’re talking about a “hard freeze,” that means temperatures are expected to drop below 26 degrees for several hours. That’s serious business. In this rare event, you probably want to have your outdoor faucets dripping and make sure your pool pump is running. This will help to keep pipes from freezing.
The forecast for the upcoming Winter for our area is wetter than normal and colder than normal. A weak “El Niño” is expected, and that usually means the storm track runs right over Florida. I would expect a higher number of storms forming in the Gulf and that increases our chance of severe weather too. El Niño years typically don’t see widespread cold for the state, but you can usually expect at least one or two freezes during the Winter. And no, wetter and colder than normal doesn’t mean snow either. We never say never, it has snowed here in the past, but odds are you can keep chuckling at your friends and family up North as they weather another cold and snowy winter. I mean, after all, we are called “The Sunshine State” for a reason!