Weather maps on the morning of December 13, 1962 showed a huge area of high pressure centered near Memphis. All across the southeastern United States, pressures were unusually high. At Memphis, the barometer read 1040.3 millibars at 7:00 a.m., which is 30.72 inches of mercury. Here is Birmingham, the pressure that morning was 1037.4 mb, or 30.63 inches. The mercury that morning still at 4 above zero in the Magic City. The temperature had dropped to as low as 1 degree above zero at the Birmingham Airport that morning, a reading which still stands as the coldest December reading ever here, tied with December 23, 1989. It was the third straight day that Birmingham had seen a record low for the date, and all three still stand to this day, testament to the novelty of the cold wave. Just the day before, the high had been a bone-chilling 13 degrees!

On that frigid December morning, all of the South was shivering in the grips Arctic blast. Upper air maps showed the jet stream bearing the cold air straight down from the frozen regions of the Yukon. It was an amazing –18F in Crossville, Tennessee and –17F at London. Kentucky. It was 10 degrees in Tallahassee, the coldest to that point in this century in Florida’s capital city. That record was broken in January 1985, when it fell to 6F. It was 12 degrees in Jacksonville and 35 in Miami.

Florida farmers and citrus growers were counting the cost in terms of millions of dollars in agricultural losses. At least eighty percent of the Sunshine State’s important citrus crop was reportedly lost after three nights of subfreezing readings, the worst cold snap in the state since the devastating freeze of 1899. Workers were pulled from ruined vegetable fields in a race against time to salvage frozen oranges so that they could be made into juice before the return of temperatures would rot the fruit on the trees.

I agree totally with Brian's post below... I am in the process of doing the Monday morning radio feed and I will use 40 for the high on Tuesday (bottom line is that most places will stay in the 30s all day), and 20 for an AVERAGE low on Wednesday morning. Colder valleys will be in the 15 to 19 degree range.

I will have much more to say tomorrow morning after the video update is done and posted. A very interesting forecast for the next 15 days....

The Sunday, December 12, video update is posting right now. A little late getting things up there due to my narration duties for the choir program at church this morning. A bit rushed getting everything done. Main point of concern is upcoming cold with hard freezes possible Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday mornings. Wednesday still looks like it will be the coldest morning so far this fall.

-Brian-