Snow and Cold Across the South: Here’s Where Records Fell

Amid a rare storm that delivered a winter blast to southern states, Florida has broken its state record for the most snowfall in 24 hours.

Milton, a town in the western Panhandle, picked up 8.75 to 10 inches of snow Tuesday morning into Wednesday morning, more than double the previous state record 24-hour period. Four inches Also set in Milton on March 6, 1954, according to the National Weather Service.

“We rarely get really measurable snowfall in Florida,” said Michael Muggeridge, a meteorologist with the weather service’s office in Mobile, Ala. “The last snowfall was in 2014, and it was pretty limited.”

The Weather Service does not have an official weather station that measures snow in Milton, Mr. Muggeridge said. The most recent storm readings, which Mr. Mograj described as reliable, came primarily from volunteer observers trained by the Weather Service.

The record will not be finalized until a meeting is held with the State Climate Extremes Committee, which reviews the climate observations. “It has to go through an exhaustive process to be entered as an official record,” Mr Muggeridge said.

Ever since the storm dumped snow in areas of the South where it normally doesn’t see it, there has been talk of a record.

About 20 miles southwest of Milton, the weather station at Pensacola International Airport measured 7.6 inches in the storm, surpassing the snowfall event record of three inches set in 1895.

Just west of Florida, the weather service office in Mobile, Ala., recorded 7.5 inches of snow, breaking the previous record of six inches set in 1895.

“I’m not exactly aware of what happened in 1895, but I imagine it’s not very different from what we had,” Mr Muggeridge said.

In Louisiana, which saw its first blizzard warning, at least one record was broken in New Orleans. On Tuesday, eight inches was recorded at Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport, where the Weather Service has maintained an official weather station since 1948. This surpasses, but does not exceed, the previous record of 2.7 inches set on December 31, 1963. Official 1895 record of 10 inches at Audubon Park.

No matter, on Tuesday, the Big Easy saw its snowiest day in more than 100 years in the metro area.

Here’s a look at the most stormy snowfall totals compiled from Tuesday morning through Wednesday morning, according to the Weather Prediction Center.