JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — February 12th 1899, a date in history across the East Coast and specifically here in Jacksonville, worth remembering.
It was the date of the single heaviest snowfall to ever fall in the City on Jacksonville and only 1 of 3 days accumulated snow was reported. The others days being in 1958 and 1989.
Unlike 1989 when traffic was snarled brought to a standstill in the city. There was no cars on roads. But livestock and agriculture was impacted, not to mention burst pipes all across the city of Jacksonville as temperatures dropped to 10 degrees that day.
The weather in Jacksonville was only a small part of a much bigger weather system known as the great blizzard of 1899. This blizzard resulted in over 100 deaths and had impacts from Canada to Cuba. In Washington DC 20 inches of snow was reported, flurries were seen in Tampa Bay and in freezing temperatures pushed as far south as Cuba.
The image below, an archived weather map for The Weather Bureau, a predecessor to the National Weather Service shows temperatures in the 20s as far south as Florida. It also shows the deep area of low pressure off the east coast of the Carolinas which dragged in the cold Canadian air south. Plus if you notice on the map the tight pressure gradient (black lines) crossing the thermo gradient (red lines). This is an indicator of strong thermal advection or the movement of the colder air south.
This image here shows a snowball fight taking place in Tallahassee on this date in 1899.
