"Arctic Blast"

The thing about Florida is that it doesn't really have Winter. There are, for the most part, only two seasons - "Hurricane Season," which starts sometime in July and continues until early October or as late as early November depending on complicated meteorological concepts like "El Nino" and "The Gulf Stream" that I don't 100% pretend to understand, and "The Rest of the Year."

"The Rest of the Year" can be divided into three sections- "Hot", "Warm," and "Those two weeks of the year when it drops below sixty and we run around like chickens with our heads cut off while we complain about how cold it is while we are still showing off our cute manicured toenails in our $2 Old Navy flip flops." What this total disconnection from How Weather Works In The Upper 48 States of the Union [not including southern California, Hawaii, and select parts of Texas] means is that, when it gets cold, especially when it stays cold like it has been these last few weeks, we have no idea what to do. Unless you are one of those people who enjoys yearly ski trips, it means you are probably ill-equipped to handle this weather.

So Floridians crank up the heat, don ski jackets and layer up their University of Florida sweatshirts six thick, and complain about how damn cold it is and how it's killing their poor citrus trees. (This is an actual problem in commercial groves, where if the temperature stays below freezing for too long it can destroy the entire crop for next year.) It also leads to amusing news stories like this one.

Being a first year student at a university well north of the Mason-Dixon line, I was looking forward to coming home and enjoying a few weeks of sunny weather and balmy temperatures. This was silly optimism - Jacksonville in January is horrible and rainy, and thanks to this "arctic blast," we're all on edge for a snow storm that probably isn't going to come. I fared only slightly better than the permanent residents of the area (whom I used to count myself as one of) only because I happen to own a jacket.

I'm heading out to the Panhandle next week before I have to go back to school on the eighteenth, hoping the weather will be better...

...It probably won't be.

-Leez.