Posted on 01/19/2007 3:21:02 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
Rebecca, Paul and Gordon Griffeth and Joey Stefko used charcoal briquettes as buttons, a carrot as a nose and twigs as arms for their snowman. They added a University of Florida baseball cap and a pipe. Tribune file photo by AUGUST STAEBLER(1977)
Folks across the Tampa Bay area awoke the morning of Jan. 19, 1977, to the sight of something that has not been seen in these parts in the 30 years since.
Snow covered the ground, vehicles and roads.
"I looked out the front window of our house and thought I'd died and gone to heaven," said former Pasco County Commissioner Sylvia Young of Darby. "I woke up everybody in the house. It was snowing in Florida!"
Snowball fights broke out in her yard once the children were dressed, and snowmen came to life from Dunedin to Tampa.
The five Griffeth children and neighbor Joey Stefko rolled snowballs to make the Frosty of Newport Circle in north Tampa.
"We all looked outside the big picture window at the snow and ran outside to play," said Gordon Griffeth, 43, now a Tampa Electric project administrator living in Dover. "It was the first time I'd seen snow.
"I saw a school bus pull up and stop next to the golf course by our house, and all the kids evacuated the bus and ran onto the golf course to play. It was so beautiful, so neat. We started making a snowman and somebody called The Tampa Tribune to shoot a picture."
They put a University of Florida baseball cap on its head and his dad's pipe in its mouth. Charcoal briquettes served as eyes and buttons, and a small carrot became its nose. Its arms were twigs.
"I told the kids, 'It's going to melt before Daddy gets home from work,'" said their mother, Esther Griffeth, who still lives in the house. "So I said, 'Let's put it in the freezer.'"
The snowman remained in the big chest freezer in the garage for about two years, with its head separated for a better fit. 'We All Looked In Wonderment'
The snowfall of less than one inch was Tampa's first in 15 years, and the white stuff fell all the way from Pensacola to Homestead, just 25 miles north of the bridge to the Florida Keys. The cold weather, which chilled fish in Tampa Bay with water temperatures of 50 degrees and air temperatures in the 20s, was nothing compared to the frigid weather up north. Cincinnati recorded a record 28 degrees below zero, and the Ohio River froze.
"We all looked in wonderment at the snow," said Doug Snow of Tampa. "Some people told me, 'Snow, you brought this on!'"
Gaye Tibbets was photographed by The Tampa Tribune at the corner of East Grand Central Avenue (now Kennedy Boulevard) and Parker Street after writing "SNOW" on the windshield with her fingertip. Another motorist inscribed: "'77 TAMPA?"
All the snow in what is supposedly a subtropical climate was hard to fathom.
"It wasn't snowing in Largo, where I was living at the time," said Mike Sanders, a Clearwater historian and real estate agent. "But I talked to my dad in Clearwater and he said, 'They are making snowmen in Dunedin.' I said, 'Yeah, and I'm Santa Claus.'"
Michael Jeffries, then a social studies teacher at Buchanan Middle School in Tampa, decided to let his students have fun with the snow.
"Amazingly, they did not close the schools," said Jeffries, now an assistant professor of information systems at the University of Tampa. "We were told to keep the kids in the classrooms, but I just let them out."
He roared with laughter and added, "They rolled in it, threw snowballs. It was gone in a couple hours and I figured it was their only chance to experience snow."
Automobiles lost control on the slick roads, and University of Tampa director of public affairs Grant Donaldson recalled Interstate 75 having its share of accidents.
"The bridges on I-75 were frozen," said Donaldson, then a Tampa Times business reporter. "People would spin out of control on them, and roll when they got back onto pavement without ice."Dade City residents lined up outside Kiefer's Pharmacy before dawn to buy film for their cameras, and owner Al Kiefer opened 15 minutes early at 6:45 a.m., according to a Pasco Tribune story. A Picture Perfect Sight
Young said she shot three or four rolls of film that day.
"The hills and the valleys were covered with snow," she said. "It covered the strawberries and cabbage we were farming. I measured it as 3 inches deep, and it took days to melt."
The snow didn't get as deep or last as long south of Pasco County.
"I was throwin' hay at Boot Ranch about 4:30 that morning when it started snowing," said Lou Angelwolf, then a Dunedin High School senior and now a local standup comedian. "Everyone ran around like crazy and we had the world's quickest snowball fight and hand-sized snowman before it melted.
"It was pretty to see snow on palm trees. It was just beautiful."
"The hysteria about "global warming" is nothing more than a LIBERAL political ploy to restrict behavior and control the agenda."
Hey! Where's the "WE'RE ALL GONNA DIE!" Alert? ;) This whole Global Warming thing is getting laughable. Thanks, Algore! :)
One small victory for common sense.
This is one of my least favorite childhood memories. I was in fourth grade at Mango Elementary, and we missed playing in it.
I remember that day well. I was in high school in Ft. Lauderdale and there were snow flurries in the air. The kids were so excited that classes couldn't go on. The principal got on the PA system and let us all go outside that morning for awhile and enjoy it. It was too thin to materialize but it was blowing around in the air.
One of the very few other days I can recall that cold in FL was in January of 1986 when the Challenger space shuttle went down. It was about 29 degrees that morning as well. Very tragic and unnecessary on that frigid morning.
There are a lot of large, flat lakes all over the state. Take your pick.
I was living in a townhouse at the Riviera on the Hillsborough River. I took photos of snow on roofs and on my car.
My office was in the First Florida Tower in downtown Tampa. The traffic was not as bad as I feared it would be going downtown that morning, but cars were sliding around.
Got to dig out those photos to show my kids, who have never seen snow.
I've lived in the Panhandle of Florida all my life and I've seen snow five times. I'm 64.
IIRC the Panhandle got some snow as recently as 1993 during the "Superstorm."
It snowed in Florida in 1995. I remember the news reports making fun of it because it was during spring break and they were laughing at the college kids who went to the beach for fun and sun and ended up getting a snow storm.
Forget 1995 - It snowed last year around Christmas to. Perhaps not in Floriduh, but in South Texas.
My mother had a sled hanging on the wall for thirty five years from when we had lived in Holland. They took it down and they had the only grandkids in the neighborhood sledding on something more than cardboard.
In 1978 "there was an incredible three-week period with 3 major storms, two of which have achieved a nearly legendary status"...
http://www.intellicast.com/DrDewpoint/Library/1371/
I remember them well.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.