WEATHER

Cold front dumps South Florida temps into the 50s

Kimberly Miller
kmiller@pbpost.com

A plunging jet stream splashed freezing rain and snow from Louisiana through the Northeast on Thursday, making for treacherous commutes and marking the first sprawling winter storm this season.

South Florida, dangling just out of reach of that torrent of Canadian air, will feel a glancing blow of chill, enough to drop Friday morning's temperatures into the 50s in Palm Beach County and tee up a weekend of sunny skies and drier air.

“It’s a pretty ideal front for South Florida because it’s one day with showers and just a little cooler, then back to comfortable temperatures,” said Jon Erdman, senior meteorologist for Weather.com, part of IBM. “The weekend looks terrific.”

As snowflakes turned streets into slushy misery in Washington, D.C., the memes promoting Florida’s sunshine began to fly.

Visit Florida Tweeted a photo of a measuring stick stuck in beach sand with the caption: “That sand is really piling up out there.”

FLORIDA MEMES: When it's snowing up north, South Florida has its days in the sun

The Best Western on Palm Beach Lakes Blvd. posted a web cam video of the White House obscured by drifts of falling snow. Below it is a photo of a pineapple in sunglasses on a beach.

Rick Netzel, director of sales and marketing at the Best Western, Palm Beach Lakes, said it's just a friendly reminder that there is a place to escape the snow.

“I will tell you it’s effective,” Netzel said. “Even in November, it’s sunny and warm and you can go to the beach here.”

The winter storm, which dumped up to nine inches of snow near St. Louis and was still covering Maryland in flurries Thursday afternoon threatened near whiteout conditions in Boston with predicted snowfall rates of one to two inches per hour.

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Monroe, La., which is in the northeastern part of the state, had record early snowfall on Wednesday with as much as a half an inch falling, Erdman said. Memphis picked up 0.6 inches snow Wednesday, its snowiest November day in 27 years.

“It has been quite a doozy of a storm,” Erdman said. “We’ve gotten some chuckles around the office saying ‘Boy, Florida must be laughing at this.’”

While the National Weather Service in Miami is forecasting a chilly 58 degrees in West Palm Beach this morning, it should warm into the mid 70s during the day.

Saturday morning will dip to the mid-60s before reaching close to 80 degrees. That will repeat on Sunday.

Both days are predicted to be mostly sunny with partly cloudy skies at night.

That means there’s a better chance of seeing this weekend’s Leonid meteor shower, which peaks in the pre-dawn hours of Saturday and Sunday.

While known for producing robust storms of thousands of meteors per minute, the Leonid shower this year is expected to be more humble with 10 to 15 meteors per hour, according to the online astronomy magazine EarthSky.

A bright waxing gibbous moon will compete with the Leonid shower for part of the night, but the moon sets in South Florida at 1:18 a.m. on Saturday and 2:11 a.m. on Sunday.

“We hear lots of reports from people who see meteors from yards, decks, streets and especially highways in and around cities,” said Deborah Byrd, editor-in-chief of EarthSky in her column this week. “But the best place to watch a meteor shower is always in the country.”

Comet 55P/Tempel-Tuttle, which orbits the sun every 33 years, is the source of the Leonids. It was discovered in 1865 by Ernst Tempel, and again independently in 1866 by Horace Tuttle. As Earth crosses Tempel-Tuttle’s trail of debris, comet crumbs shoot into the atmosphere, burning up to create fiery streaks as they fall.

Leonid meteors travel at speeds 44 miles per second, and are known for creating Earth grazers — meteors that streak close to the horizon with long and colorful tails.

“When night falls, you’ll probably be impatient to see meteors,” Byrd said. “But remember that the shower is best after midnight.”

kmiller@pbpost.com

@Kmillerweather