Is it Colder than Last Year? What the Data Says.

by | Jan 17, 2025 | Climate, Florida Panhandle

Over the last 10 years or so, the Florida Panhandle has gotten used to relatively warm winters, at least historically speaking.  While we have experienced sharp cold snaps that were devastating to unprepared landscapes and gardens (the most recent being the late December dip down into the low to mid-teens in 2022), they haven’t lasted long and, overall, winters have been mild.  Anecdotally, it seems like this winter (2024-2025) has been a return to a historical norm, with extended periods of cloudy, dreary cold; but does the data support that feeling?  Let’s find out.

There are several ways of measuring the relative cold of one winter to the next.  You could use weather station data and see what the coldest temperatures a given year received.  You could track how many days the mercury dipped below freezing.  You could measure the maximum temperatures and compare those year to year.  However, for gardeners, commercial crop growers, and most other people, I think the most useful and intuitive comparison of winter intensity from year to year is chill hours.

A chill hour is loosely defined as an hour below 45 degrees.  Chill hours play a big role in deciduous fruiting plants flowering cycle and ultimately help determine if those plants make fruit the following year or not.  While that is important to fruit growers, in this article, we’re more concerned with using chill as a relative comparison of winter intensity year to year.  Last winter, the Florida Automated Weather Network (FAWN) station in Marianna (the closest one to Calhoun County that observes chill hours) logged 326 hours from the period of October 1 to January 14.  This winter, that same weather station has logged 426 hours in the same period of time.  A little elementary school math tell us we’ve received 100 more chill hours *so far* this year than we received last year – the equivalent of four entire 24 hour days under 45 degrees!  That’s pretty significant.  However, the historical average over the same time period is 571 chill hours, so we are still lagging behind what the area “used” to receive.

So yes, this winter has been colder than last at the time of this writing (January 16) and that isn’t even considering the extreme cold forecast for next week (week of January 20th) when you’re likely to be reading this.  Things have been cold and are likely to remain that way for at least the rest of January, maybe beyond into February.  However, it is important to remember that this year isn’t an outlier historically, as even this spat of recent cold finds us lagging our historical cold temperature norms a bit.

To track chill hours yourself, visit this website.  For more information on our local natural resources and climate, contact your local Extension office.  Bundle up out there an enjoy the coldest winter in several years!

Daniel J. Leonard
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