Florida Winters are Different

In Missouri, if the government schools close due to weather it's typically because:

• The temperatures are in the below zero fahrenheit range; and/or
• The roads are extremely dangerous because of ice and snow cover.

And even then, not necessarily. I remember a bus ride in high school that included suddenly going down the street while perpendicular to the street and nearly running over a motorcyclist who had wiped out in front of us on the same patch of ice.

Yesterday, Tamara got an email informing her that the University of Florida would not shut down today. Kind of strange. Why would it? It shut down, grudgingly, for Hurricane Irma (they were going to have their football game right before the storm arrived, until the governor ordered every government entity in Florida to close). Then I saw this:

Based on a weather advisory issued by the National Weather Service at 3:16 pm today, Alachua County Public Schools and offices will closed Jan 3 & 4. They'll reopen Fri, Jan 5. Makeup days have tentatively been scheduled for June 4 & 5.

— Alachua Schools (@AlachuaSchools) January 2, 2018

So, what's the weather forecast for today and tomorrow?

Today: High of 41, low of 26, rain. I'm guessing that low of 26 will be tonight, because it didn't get down to freezing last night and the precipitation this morning was liquid, not ice.

Tomorrow: High of 47, low of 24, sunny. It looks like the chances of precipitation decrease steeply after noon today, down to 0% by midnight. So the roads shouldn't be icy tomorrow morning.

The only thing I can think of that might make this understandable is that perhaps some of the kids down here don't have heavy coats for weather quite this cold.

But I wonder about even that. We usually have a few days of lows in the low 20s or even teens each winter, and I see people bundled up like they're preparing for the Iditarod any time the temperature falls below 60 (I'm turning into one of those people myself after only five years here).