Miami snowed on January 19, 1977 – a day no South Floridian ever imagined. As an arctic cold front made its way down the Florida coast, flakes started falling in Broward and Miami-Dade between 8 am, and 9:30 am. There were flurries as far south as Homestead, but most snow melted when it touched the ground. Temperatures dipped into the 30s that day, with a high of 47 degrees.
The Miami News headline that afternoon screamed: “Snow in Miami!” The next day The Miami Herald’s read: “The Day It Snowed in Miami.
Those who witnessed the rare event will never forget it fondly. Some hurricanes come and go, but snow in Miami? That’s once in a lifetime. There is no official record of snow falling in Miami. The last time something resembling snow fell over South Florida was in 1899. And not this far south, only down to Fort Pierce. A combination of two cold fronts caused Miami’s snowfall during the Blizzard of 1977 – one passed the region on January 16, followed by a second, faster-moving one in the middle of the night the day it fell. There was more than $300 million in agricultural damage in South Florida due to the 1977 snowstorm.
