FORT MYERS, Fla. — A shot of unusually cold arctic air is heading for Florida this weekend, bringing the Gulf Coast some of the lowest temperatures we have seen in over a decade.
Amazingly, it could even be cold enough for snow.
The process that would create the snow would be a similar one that produces lake-effect snow, often seen in the Great Lakes. Lake-effect snow occurs when an arctic air mass moves over the relatively warmer waters of a lake. The air directly in contact with the water warms and rises through the much colder air aloft.
This allows clouds and precipitation to form, which then can be pushed onshore, in the form of snow, by the prevailing winds.
A similar process could play out over the warm waters of the Gulf this weekend. As a coastal low forms near the Carolinas on Saturday, a shot of arctic air will be pushed southward over the Gulf and toward Florida.
This could produce a few pockets of “Gulf effect” precipitation. In some cases, it would be cold enough for that precipitation to fall as snow. Here, our in-house Futurecast model shows some snow mixing in as some light showers form near and north of the Tampa area around midnight Sunday.
A few hours later, that same model shows a mix of light rain and some flurries along the coast here in Southwest Florida!
Any type of wintry precipitation is extremely rare in Southwest Florida. In fact, since recordkeeping began in the late 1800s, there has never been an official report of measurable snow in Fort Myers…