Snow in South Florida!

No, not today. While the rest of the nation is covered under sheets of ice, South Florida is enjoying temps in the low 80s. A nice warm winter.

According to the Sun-Sentinel newspaper, 30 years ago today, snow fell in South Florida.

No, really. Snow. In South Florida. Might as well had been hell freezing over for the way the press treated the event. At the very least, the story broke up the monotony of the advertising blitz of patriotism surrounding the US bicentennial ("The nation is 200 years old! Woot!" was out celebratory cry - Europeans were not impressed and politely asked us to keep the noise down a bit).

I remember that day only vaguely. I was walking to school (it was too cold to bicycle) and took little notice of the rain. Well, at the time I thought it was rain, for I was getting wet, but this rain had a strange manner - it was falling slowly. In addition to the lack of speed, the drops were also occasionally going sideways.

Now anybody who has ever spent any time in Florida will surely tell you that horizontal rain in Florida is not uncommon. It happens quite regularly during downpours, fronts, tropical storms and hurricanes. And as far as I knew then, horizontal rain was always a group activity. Slowly falling rain with some drops going sideways was wrong.

Just to put this into a better perspective, I was 10, maybe 11 at the time. A typical South Florida kid who had only ever gone out of state during the summer months. I knew diddly-over-squat about actual snow, and little has changed in that area.

When I finally got to school was when I found out that this particular rain was better known as snow. Unfortunately, at my height, at the time, most of the flakes had melted back into rain. Still, it was an interesting and somewhat beautiful event.

I wonder if my employer would think I've completely flipped if I called-out for a snow day....