As Winter Storm Enzo passed over North Florida late Tuesday night, Vanessa Hervie set out from Gainesville on a last-minute road trip in hopes of witnessing a rare occurrence in the Sunshine State: snowfall. Hervie, a 21-year-old UF chemistry junior, and nine of her friends trekked 30 miles north to Fort White, where it had been forecasted to snow.
But according to Hervie, all Enzo left behind was “a little bit of ice and crunchiness.”
“It was like somebody sprinkled their snow cone around,” Hervie said.
Enzo had blanketed parts of the Florida Panhandle in up to two inches of snow throughout Tuesday and Wednesday. In Tallahassee — the home of UF’s bitter rival, the Florida State Seminoles — students shared videos to social media depicting miniature snowmen, snowball fights and students sledding through snow-filled streets.
About 32 miles south of Fort White in Gainesville, UF closed campus and canceled classes in anticipation of the storm. The National Weather Service predicted a brief snowfall around 6 a.m Wednesday. Students expressed mixed feelings on the anonymous messaging app Yik Yak — some planned to rise early for the rare event, while others said they would sleep right through it.
The storm brought temperatures in the 30s, stints of freezing rain and wind gusts up to 26 mph to Gainesville early Wednesday morning — but to many Gators’ disappointment, not snow. As sunrise approached, the heavy overnight precipitation began to sputter out just as temperatures dropped to freezing.
“There was nothing there,” said Kira Tuper, a 19-year-old UF exploratory freshman who woke up at 6 a.m. in hopes of seeing snow.
UF reopened campus by 12:30 p.m. and students like Fatima Khan, a 21-year-old political science junior, had to trudge to class in 36-degree weather, with a wind chill of 29 degrees.
“I don’t want to go,” Khan said, pointing to her shivering hands. “I wasn’t ready for this.”
The National Weather Service issued freeze watches from Tuesday morning to Wednesday afternoon, bringing the total freeze advisories for Alachua County to 18 for January with over a week left in the month.
The area hasn’t seen so many January freeze warnings since Florida’s 2010 cold stun event. Daily temperatures throughout the month have also been an average of six degrees colder per day compared to Gainesville’s normal.
The unusually cold weather culminated with Enzo, when air temperature briefly dipped below freezing point between 8 and 9 a.m. Wednesday morning.
During that brief period, air temperature hit a low of just under 31 degrees, one degree below freezing, according to National Weather Service reports.
However, wind chill throughout the storm made the weather feel much colder for Gainesville residents, with “feels like” temperatures dipping to a low of 21 degrees that morning and remaining in the 20s throughout the day Wednesday.
The National Weather Service forecasts that temperatures will hover between the low 30s and high 50s for the rest of the week, with scattered rain storms through Thursday.
“It’s not a normal thing that Florida is cold like that,” said AJ Andrianirina, an 18-year-old UF computer science freshman originally from Madagascar. “I was expecting to have some warmer weather here.”
Zoey Thomas and Pristine Thai contributed to this report.
Contact Shaine Davison and Sofia Meyers at sdavison@alligator.org and smeyers@alligator.org. Follow them on X @shainedavison and @SofiaMeyer84496.
