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| A snowball fight on the steps of the Florida Statehouse Tallahassee, February 13, 1899 during the worst cold spell in American history. |
The second week in February that year brought the worst cold wave in American history. This was the winter that brought actual temperatures - not wind chills - ranging from 61 below in Montana to 2 below in Tallahassee, Florida. Yes, Florida.
This is the only known time that temperatures fell below zero in Florida.
Come to think of it, though, it is about as cold in Vermont today as it was during that cold spell in 1899.
That's because the bulk of the 1899 blast hit to our west and south, running from the Pacific Northwest, into the Rocky Mountains, then the Plains, through the Midwest and down to the Gulf Coast and Southeast.
Northern New England got a break in that one.
The coldest air in the 1899 outbreak came through Vermont on February 10-12 and it really wasn't that bad. Low temperatures those three days in Burlington were minus 6, minus 10 and minus 8.
Incredibly on February 13, Burlington, Vermont was a full 13 degrees warmer than Tallahassee. The low temperature that day in Burlington was for us, close to average for the season, at 11 degrees above zero.
Other cold readings outside of Vermont on February 13, 1899 seem impossible by today's standards. It was 28 below in Springfield, Missouri; 6 above in Galveston, Texas; minus 4 in Shreveport, Louisiana and 7 above in New Orleans.
For comparison, the worst cold wave in the South in recent years, which happened last February, seems tame by comparison. Last February, the coldest it got in Galveston was 20 degrees. New Orleans last February bottomed out at 25 degrees and Shreveport was 1 above zero.
The cold wave incredibly created ice in the entire Mississippi River. Ice floes floated past New Orleans and emptied out into the Gulf of Mexico.
The Weather Bureau, the predecessor to the current-day National Weather Service, actually did an amazing job forecasting this cold wave, especially given the limited knowledge and technology of the time.
Places in the path of the cold wave were given a one or two day advance warning of the frigid air, allowing people to protect themselves and property from the cold. About 100 people died in the cold wave, which is a very low death toll given the magnitude of the event.
There was nothing anybody could do to protect crops in the far southern United States. The nascent Florida citrus industry took a terrible blow. The cold was intense enough to not just wreck that year's crop but to kill orange trees in many locations.
Cold waves often spawn snowstorms on the southern and eastern edges of the brutal chill, and 1899 was no exception. The Arctic blast generated a storm that dusted Fort Myers and Tampa, Florida with snow on February 12.
The storm then roared up the Eastern Seaboard. Intense cold accompanied blinding snow. The storm dumped 20 inches of snow on Washington DC, and 34 inches on Cape May, New Jersey, a part of that state on the Atlantic Coast that often avoids the worst of the frigid nor'easters that sometime lumber their way up the East Coast.
Once again, the snowstorm wasn't that bad in Vermont, at least in the northwestern part of the state. Five inches of snow fell on Burlington, Vermont, raising the snow cover on the ground to a foot of snow. As we know, those figures are absolutely no big deal for Vermont.
A high pressure system from the Arctic with near record high barometric pressures caused this cold wave. If you get such a high pressure system with very high pressure - over 31 inches - you're very likely to experience record cold.
Brutal cold waves are always very possible in the United States during the winter. As I've already noted, the Midwest and South suffered such an Arctic blast last February.
However, I'd say that climate change has rendered anything on the level of February, 1899 pretty much impossible.
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