Florida's Apocalypse

I'm going to get in trouble for this post, but I don't care.  It's just too important, and dammit, sometimes people need help whether they want their problems publicized or not.

People, our own litbrit is in trouble.  And not just her, but millions of her fellow Floridians are about to have their entire world smashed apart. 

You probably haven't heard about it, because there's so much bad news going around right now.  But the crisis that's about to hit central Florida is as real, and as devastating, as anything you've ever heard of.  Actually, it's worse.

Here goes:  tomorrow night, in Tampa and surrounding areas, it's supposed to get down to 38 degrees.

Fahrenheit.

I'm so shocked by this I don't even know what to do for them.  I mean, in Kansas City, 38 degrees in February means "lets go out and play."  But Florida?  Do they have houses to go into?  Seriously, litbrit, do stores down there have "coats" and "blankets?"  In many parts of the world, homes are equipped with "furnaces," which blow warm air throughout the house.  Have you heard of that down there?

I hope they get through this, I really do

Comments

[DymaxionworldJohn]

On behalf of my home and native land (thanks for lending us yer president, btw) I say this:

Die in a snowbank, Florida.

I kid. It's just that our unseasonably warm winter weather last week in Toronto still didn't crack 30 fahrenheit, I think. Also confusing is American insistence on using archaic units of measurement. I'm working on building my home in cubits...

[Sir Charles]

We can't seem to make up our minds here in DC. It was nearly seventy twice last week and today was in the low fifties. But then a chill wind blew in and now it is heading into the teens by morning. Tough to take after the teases of the last few days.

Good luck staying warm D. -- and keeping the plants warm.

[ballgame]

In the past, when I've talked to Floridians about dealing with a particularly nasty bout of winter — two feet of snow, say, or some miserable freezing rain — they'd "commiserate" by saying, "Yeah, I know, it got really bad down here, too! It dipped below 50 last night … I had to put on a sweater!"

Their "empathy" was really "touching". But we know they must have sweaters down there.

So … sweater riots?

(Stay warm, LB!)

[Stephen]

I went to college in San Diego after growing up in southern New Mexico. I'm much more used to heat than I am the cold, and I can remember those days in San Diego when it would get into the 50's and how cold I thought it was. Oh well, San Diego might have amazing weather, it might have the ocean with beautiful beaches, it might be close to the mountains, but Kansas City has. . .um, Kansas City has. . .I dunno. Ribs, I guess.

[Corvus]

Here in Iowa, we have been getting lots of days these last few weeks hovering a little below 38. It's so unusually warm, it's kind of scary.

Florida is just so frickin' weird. Be safe, litbrit!

[litbrit]

Ah ye of little faith!

I live in Florida, sure--not by choice, though--but I am born of a small(ish) cold and rainy island in northern Europe, and my ancestors are Vikings and Angles.

Which is not to say I don't feel the cold. Or that I don't fight to be in front of the fire (remember: four cats and three lads).

Yeah, it has been an unusually cold winter here this time around. If we were a normal family who went to the beach on weekends, I would probably be pissed. But we aren't, and I'm not. Not about that, anyway.

Thank you all for the warm wishes, though! I need, and will always take, as many warm wishes and hugs--any time of year--as you're willing to dispense or will my way.

[Voice o' Reason]

I am from sometimes cold and sometimes snowy New England. I have chosen to live in Southern California for more than two decades now. We folks who live in warmish climes, yer SoCal and yer Florida and the like, have to take shit like this from yer Kansans and yer Nebraskans and yer Minnesotans and whatnot.

But think on this:

1) Wherever you choose to live, you grow used to the range of temperatures, so your extra-hots seem extra hot and your extra-colds seem extra cold, no matter where they fall. I've lost my New Englandy edge, and when it dips below 60, I feel like I'm not getting what I've got coming to me by dint of my having chosen to live here. It's not what the brochures promised me, dammit.

2) Because the weather isn't what you might consider cold here (or in Florida), builders save money by not including anything resembling insulation when they construct our housing. As a result, when it gets cold outside, it gets cold inside. (In the summmer, it gets freakin' hot inside, too.) My bedroom here in my Sherman Oaks apartment is colder in the winter than was my bedroom in my childhood home in Beverly, Massachusetts, which was built sometime before 1900 and had no heating ducts in the three upstairs bedrooms, which we didn't figure out until winter hit six months after we moved in. (Buy in summer, repent in winter.)

To sum up, those who don't like the weather where they live should move. That goes for you, Mr. I-Live-Where-It-Gets-Cold-So-My-Heart-Must-Be-Pure. Litbrit is a tough cookie and a fine human being who deserves our support and love. So am I, for that matter.

Plus it's been my birthday for, like, 62 minutes now, on the West Coast at least, so everybody should be nice to me no matter how little sense I make after drinking bottles of hard cider I smuggled into the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre to suck down while watching Convoy, a three-man improv group who are the bestest thing since either sliced bread or insulation, I'm not sure which.

[low-tech cyclist]

My wife, who grew up a stone's throw from where litbrit lives nowadays, says that temperatures in the 30s are something that typically happens once or twice a winter in central Florida. No big deal.

DymaxionworldJohn - I, for one, will defend the Fahrenheit temperature scale. I look forward to the day when the U.S. shifts to the metric system in every other way. But a 0-to-100 scale is easy to grasp, and if you live in a temperate climate, the Fahrenheit temperature rarely leaves that range. And when it does, the message is obvious: it's either too damned cold, or too damned hot.

[drip]

Kansas City has. . .um, Kansas City has. . .I dunno. Ribs, I guess. And blues. And jazz. Tampa doesn't even have ribs -- not that it isn't a fine place to live.

Ms. drip just came back to suburban Maryland from 5 weeks in Panama where the average high is 88-92 and low 76-70 all year round. She is soooo unhappy with the mid 40's.

[low-tech cyclist]

Tampa doesn't even have ribs -- not that it isn't a fine place to live.

Yeah, but just try to get a good Cuban sandwich in suburban Maryland. Let alone a decent guava-and-cheese tart.

[MR Bill]

Well, it's 15, clear and cold in Trendy Blue Ridge GA. I get crap with the folks I chat with online that 'Georgia doesn't have winter' (I've been heating with firewood since October..) 'It doesn't snow in Georgia' (then I'm not sure what that white stuff was..). In fact, I live at about 2200 ft (city of Blue Ridge 1850, approx), and we've had a decent winter here: a couple of +four day periods where the temps stayed below freezing, a couple of warm spells (made it to 60 last week)with the average temps (daytime highs in the 40s, nights teens and 20s)..I am fortunate to live in a place where we have four approximately equal seasons.
Used to do the Florida crafts shows, back in the '80s, and, when I was still camping out a lot, spent several miserable nights freezing in an inadequate sleeping bag. Florida is a big state, and the northern bits of it have some cold weather, the message of the Tourism Board be damned.

[litbrit]

Happy Birthday Voice o'! (((hugs)))

You are quite right about not living somewhere you hate--believe me, I've been trying to get out of here for two decades. I had plane tickets to your neck of the woods, actually, and was headed to law school, when suddenly I met R, moved to the boonies of Florida ("It's just temporary!"....sure) and the rest is history.

It's not the heat I despise, it's the lack of human interaction, mainly, something I'll have again one day if our house is ever finished and we move to St. Pete. St. Pete is kind of like a combination of Xanadu and Nirvana--a moving goalpost of an imagined state of artsy opulence and bliss. There are cafés and theatres and little live music venues and a huge artists' community there (shhh...it's still a pretty well-kept secret). And, it's such a pretty, old town. There are numerous waterfront parks and lots of great architecture from the early part of last century.

But honestly, I do miss the seasons of my homeland, and the climbing roses and the clover and sweet-peas, and of course the rolling hills and dramatic cliffs (I am from the south of England). Florida is so dull and flat. Plus, the flowers here are big and waxy, and they smell like...nothing.

*Sigh*

I just built a huge fire (Viking roots coming in handy) and now have three out of four cats climbing on me as I try to enjoy five minutes of peace before starting the day's work. So I raise my coffee cup to wish you a very happy one, V, and to wish readers everywhere as warm a day as possible.

(p.s. It's nowhere near as cold as they thought it would be this morning--high forties, I think--but I'll take any excuse to build a fire.)

[litbrit]

ltc, so true about good Cuban food. Black beans and rice are not the same elsewhere. There is a method to cooking them properly! Green peppers are involved! Also, if you know where to go, the old Italian community of Ybor City/Tampa has kept some fine old-school restaurants going for many decades.

MR Bill, I've been talking to TRex, who is very displeased with the unusually cold winter in Georgia this year. He echoes Voice o's comments about building insulation.

[Sir Charles]

Voice o',

Happy birthday as well. I was driving down I-95 yesterday convinced that there was a February 20th birthday I should be remembering. Now the light has come on.

It is really bitterly cold here this morning. February has decided to reassert itself.

[drip]

try to get a good Cuban sandwich in suburban Maryland No problemo. Cubanos in Silver Spring. The ropa viejo is worth a trip next time you're within 50 miles. Can't speak to the desserts, but I cn guarantee that the weather will be too hot in the summer and too cold in the winter.

[Stephen]

When we lived in Concord, CA - in the East Bay - it would get over 100F quite a bit in the summer. Our bedroom wall got the afternoon/evening sun full blast, and it was painfully hot to the touch - inside. There's a nice city marina and park in Martinez, where we would take a picnic supper about 4 times a week. It was too miserable in the house to exist, let alone try to cook something. So, yeah, construction methods count.

The best heating method we ever had was in Korea, where they heat the floors. It used to be done by burning coal under the floor, but people got tired of dying from carbon monoxide, so now a lot of homes and apartments have a network of pipes for hot water. When it's really cold outside, there's nothing like taking off your shoes and laying down on a heated floor.

[nimh]

I dont know what the hell the temp here would be in fahrenheit, but i do know that it just keeps snowing, snowing, and snowing again. Which is ridiculous by late February.

[has_te]

Stephen you should have been
--deservedly must have been..
in total sh*t for major snot.

Good thing the lovely Librit is a lady.

[Voice o' Reason]

Sir C: Just remember...add a zero to your birthday and get my birthday, which makes it ten times wicked-good-er and important-er. Or, you know, not.

My mother is coming to visit later this afternoon, and I have a kitchen full of dishes. The dilemma: wash them before she gets here, or let her cluck when she sees them and grab a sponge?

(The former. It will help me grow up at some point, maybe even before I turn 50, and will be a birthday present to myself in the form of developing fortitude and stick-to-it-iveness.)

[Sir Charles]

has-te,

You always have to add the "wo, wo, wos" around here when you use the phrase "she's a lady."

VOR,

Let your mom do the dishes -- it will make her feel useful and you won't have to do them. Win, win baby!

[oddjob]

litbrit, there's no need to lack climbing roses in Florida. Here's a website I encourage you to check out. I've linked to one of the discussions full of recommendations for antique climbing roses that will grow in southern Florida (based upon the experiences of those who live there and have tried them).

(I specifically went to the forum covering antique roses in no small part because there are many older roses that grow just fine in your cool sub-tropical climate. Their genetic heritage is less mixed and they are closer to the wild roses of northern India and southern China where the temps. are similar to Florida's. Consequently they survive better and often need much less babying. They won't grow at all for me up in New England unless I baby them extraordinarily, but then again up here I can grow antique roses native to Europe and northern North America that won't tolerate Florida's hot, wet summers.)

If you are intrigued by what you see and like the idea of conversing go ahead and register and ask questions there. It's totally free and you won't be pestered to buy anything. You just log in when you want to ask questions or comment and otherwise the place doesn't impose itself upon your web life at all.

[low-tech cyclist]

drip - I'll have to check out Cubanos the next time something takes me to the north side of the Beltway.