PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. — South Florida is the weather capital of the country today: Falling iguanas and -- could it be -- snowfall, too?
Video captured by Amber Fortino Castro showed what appears to be small snowflakes or flurries late Wednesday morning. All the while, precipitation has been moving onshore from the Atlantic Ocean.
It's a chilly sort of precip, with temperatures across the region in the mid to upper 50s and low 60s, but it doesn't snow when it's that warm.
So, what's up with that video?
The National Weather Service office in Miami says what's being seen isn't snow and is more along the lines of light showers or graupel -- a small, sort of soft-ice particle. It's these pieces of ice, graupel and not snow, that's on video.
To nerd out further: Cold air on top of the relatively warmer waters of the Atlantic Ocean is creating instability and some updrafts -- think rising air -- that sends water droplets higher up into the freezing part of the atmosphere. Those little water droplets freeze to existing snowflake high above the surface and once they become heavy enough, fall to the ground as graupel.
"It can be confused as snow sometimes," says 10News Chief Meteorologist Bobby Deskins, "but it was way too warm for snow today. Temperatures were in the mid-50s in the area and the freezing level was around 11,000 feet.
"That's way too warm for snow to fall and not melt before it reaches the ground."
He says it's easier to think of graupel as a softer version of hail. While exciting, the weather service drives home the point: "This is not snow."
It's not like it hasn't even snowed in Florida before. Forty-three years ago, the flurries piled up to as much as 2 inches across parts of Tampa Bay. Parts of the Panhandle more recently in 2017 got a dusting.
Iguanas did fall, though. The cold-blooded reptiles aren't suited for 40-degree temperatures, no match for the ongoing cold snap, and can become "stunned" when the thermometer drops.
They're probably not dead, just immobilized until temperatures warm once again.
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