Likely record-breaking snow falls in Florida

AccuWeather

Storm chaser Aaron Rigsby found himself in familiar territory in the Florida panhandle on Jan. 21, but with weather that is anything but familiar there.

Transcript

00:00AccuWeather's preliminary estimate of total damage and economic loss for this once-in-a-generation storm

00:05are between 14 and 17 billion dollars. That was just released in the past hour

00:10from our data analytics team here at AccuWeather. Our coverage continues.

00:16With storm chaser Aaron Rigsby, he joins us live from Muskogee, Florida with an update. Aaron,

00:22you've just been following this storm, following the snow. What are things like there?

00:30Yeah, good evening guys. Well, I tell you, I can't believe I'm standing in front of the

00:34Welcome to Florida sign with about five to six inches of snow at my feet. I mean, it's just

00:39truly unbelievable. I'd never thought in my chasing career, and I've been chasing for 15 years now,

00:45that I would ever see this much snow on the ground in the Florida panhandle.

00:49I-10 is just beside me here, and it is almost impassable. If you have four-wheel drive or a

00:54jeep or something higher up, you're probably going to be fine, but conditions have really

00:59deteriorated. The snow is still coming down at a pretty moderate pace right now, heavy at times,

01:04but I tell you, the road conditions, I mean, they're going to be rough for at least the next 24

01:08to 48 hours, and I want to remind you something. Over the last four months,

01:11I've documented Hurricane Helene here. I've documented Hurricane Milton here. I saw the

01:16Northern Lights down by Fort Myers Beach, Florida, and now I'm standing in snow in the Florida

01:22panhandle. You want to talk about a whiplash of events over the last four months? I mean,

01:25it's just truly been unbelievable. That's absolutely wild, and back in the 1950s,

01:30there was a four-inch snow event in part of northern Florida. It appears that we broke the

01:36state snowfall record in Florida. Now, records like this aren't just taken at a whim, so this is

01:42going to be reviewed by a board of people there with the climate analysts and so forth, but

01:48it's likely that this is it, Florida's biggest snowstorm on record, and Aaron's there for it.

01:53Aaron, how are people responding to all this?

01:57Well, you know, guys, that's one good thing that's been out of the event is that a lot of

01:59folks did take this storm very seriously. There's been widespread businesses closed. Essentially,

02:05pretty much all the schools in this vicinity, in the Florida panhandle and into Alabama,

02:09Mississippi, and the New Orleans area have pretty much closed their doors at least today,

02:13and I would expect that to continue into tomorrow because this is a significant event for the North

02:18and the South. It's going to take time to clean this up. The highways are going to be priority

02:23number one, such as I-10, that main east-west artery, before they can work their way into these

02:28towns and get to these county highways, so it's going to be pretty rough conditions, but everyone's

02:31been in good spirits. They've been enjoying the snow, making snow angels, even snowboarding on

02:36the side of some of the hills, so people are taking advantage of the rare opportunity in this

02:40once-in-generational event because they'll probably never have it again. Yeah, that's the thing about

02:44storms like this. There's pros and cons to it. Storm chaser Erin Rigsby, thank you for that update.

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