Snow Predicted in Tampa Tonight

I woke up this morning and checked the local news ticker on my iPod's web browser. The headline read "if the weather dominoes line up just right, folks from Tampa Bay to Brooksville stand a chance of seeing some snow Tuesday night."

What?

The last time that it snowed in Tampa was in 1977. I remember it well. I was seven years old and in the second grade at Mendenhall Elementary. I woke up to my Mom excitedly telling me to hurry up and come look out the window, and that there was a blanket of snow on the ground. Even at seven years old, I was on to my Mom using interesting anecdotes to make me get out of bed. I wasn't buying it.

Thirty-two years have passed to the day. Exactly. If that isn't an omen, then I don't know what is. The last measurable snow in Tampa fell on January 19, 1977. The accumulation amounted to all of 0.2 inches, but the city, unprepared for and unaccustomed to wintry weather, came to a virtual standstill for a day. There was hardly any accumulation where we lived at, but I can remember staying home from school and scraping a few snowballs off of my Mom's AMC Hornet windshield. We even saved one in the refrigerator's freezer for quite some time.

Unforgettable would be the best way to describe it, as I've carried those memories with me for my entire life. So, tonight I'll keep my fingers crossed in hopes that we have another freakish show shower that will blanket our city. I wonder that if it snows in central Florida if all of the blue-haired snow birds will leave town early? That could ease some of the traffic on our already congested roads.

Keep up with our local Tampa weather here.