See the astounding satellite images of Florida’s historic snow
A once-in-a-lifetime winter storm roared through the southern U.S. on Tuesday, bringing Florida the state’s biggest snowfall on record
The Gulf Coast’s biggest snowstorm in living memory blanketed the region this week, dropping accumulating snow from Houston, Texas, to North Carolina’s Outer Banks.
Satellite images revealed the extent of this unprecedented winter storm across the area, which brought Florida the most snow ever reported in the state’s history.
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A gorgeous blanket of snow from space
A significant thump of snow on Tuesday, Jan. 21, made travel impossible for several days across southern portions of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida.
Communities here couldn’t clear roads for lack of any equipment to deal with the rare bout of wintry weather.
Clear skies made the region’s thick snowpack easily visible from space. Snow fell all the way to the beaches of the Gulf of Mexico, some of which haven’t seen measurable snow in years.
The storm was characterized by a very sharp cutoff in snowfall totals on the northern edge of the system.
Beautiful cloud streets are also visible just off the coast. Relatively warm waters in the northern Gulf of Mexico warmed up the frigid air blowing offshore, allowing the air to rise and create vast fields of puffy cumulus clouds.
It didn’t take long for the snowfall to melt, though.
By Thursday, Jan. 23, a significant chunk of the snow had already melted—with just the deepest snowpack hanging tight against the warming temperatures and bright southern sunshine.
Historic snowfall totals
This was a truly historic storm across the region.
Pensacola, Florida, officially recorded 22.6 cm (8.9 in.) of snow by the end of the storm on Tuesday night. Totals as high as 25.4 cm (10.0 in.) were reported just outside of Pensacola. These are likely the highest snowfall totals ever reported in the state of Florida.
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Next door in Alabama, 19.0 cm (7.5 in.) of snow fell in Mobile, an all-time record in the coastal port city. The previous recordholding storm here was the blizzard of 1895, which dropped 15.2 cm (6.0 in.) of snow on southwestern Alabama.
New Orleans, Louisiana, saw even more snowfall. The popular vacation destination recorded 20.3 cm (8.0 in.) of snow at the airport, another all-time total for southeastern Louisiana.
Lafayette, La., located about 250 km to the west of New Orleans, witnessed a whopping 25.4 cm (10.0 in.) of snow during the storm. This snowpack helped Lafayette’s low temperature Wednesday morning to dip down to -15.5°C (4°F), the coldest temperature ever observed there with records dating back to 1893.
