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Need to chill out? Citrus is the spot

By JEFF KLINKENBERG
Published December 21, 2006

INVERNESS

When sweater weather finally arrives in Tampa, when folks on both sides of the bay toast the end of air-conditioning season with rum-laced eggnog, a white-haired guy named Fred Steenstra pulls on his long johns, trudges onto his frosty lawn and shivers.

His back yard might be the icebox of west-central Florida.

An amateur weather buff, the 76-year-old Steenstra has constructed an elaborate meteorology station on a hill outside his house on Man-O-War Drive in Citrus County. He's one of those "weather watchers" who contribute reports to daily newspapers, including the St. Petersburg Times.

"I'm from Maine," says the retired electronics engineer whose yard iced down to a west-central Florida low 21 degrees last Feb. 25. "So I'm always surprised how cold it can get in Florida."

Many snowbird romantics who migrate south believe Florida is supposed to be a Jimmy Buffett paradise where folks in flip-flops watch cavorting flamingoes and toss down margaritas - even on Christmas Eve.

Alas, no, not in interior Citrus County, often colder by a half-dozen degrees or more than nearby burgs. Jack Frost doesn't just nip noses around Inverness. The old sadist tweaks them first. They'll see - today is the first day of winter.

Inverness and nearby towns, including Floral City, Holder and Beverly Hills once advertised as "the Alps of Florida", are certifiably goose bump territory.

That isn't a parrot on your neighbor's shoulder. It's a St. Bernard, and he's drinking brandy.

"When I moved here from St. Petersburg I expected it would be a little cooler," says Bonnie Kuntz, who owns a bed-and-breakfast, Magnolia Glen, outside Inverness. "Then one winter morning a few years ago I saw ice on the edge of the lake."

Nobody pulled on their skates, and nobody headed for Don's Fish Camp to buy ice augers. "It never gets quite that bad," says Helen Sells, who once owned the Withlacoochee River camp with her husband, Don. "But to be in a boat when it's really cold - well, you really feel the cold."

Why are we shivering?

Interior Citrus County isn't the coldest spot in Florida. Tallahassee thermometers recorded 2 degrees on Feb. 13, 1899.

But in west-central Florida, an area comprising Citrus, Manatee, Pinellas, Hillsborough, Pasco and Hernando counties, interior Citrus qualifies as the icebox.

Charlie Paxton of the National Weather Service provides several reasons. One, it's inland, miles away from the temperature-moderating waters of the Gulf of Mexico. Two, the highlands of Inverness - a few hills do scrape the sky at 100 feet or more - intercept the passing cold. Three, when winds die down, cold settles into the depressions between the hills.

Four, there's less concrete and asphalt to absorb heat in mostly rural Citrus. In fact, the dry soil of the highlands surrenders heat much faster than the moister soil along the coast.

The average low last January in St. Petersburg was 56.4 degrees. In Tampa, the average low was 53.4. In Inverness, according to the National Weather Service, the average low was 45.3 degrees.

"We have a lot more long pants days than anybody else," says Linda Verone, deputy clerk of the Inverness courthouse.

Forget the britches. Inverness has more glove and leather jacket days as well. On one terrible February morning in 1895, mercury dropped to 11 degrees. Trees cracked, bark peeled, oranges froze.

For a county named after its most important industry, the famous freeze was considered a tragedy. Citrus farmers all over the northern half of the state declared bankruptcy. In Citrus, many farmers replanted only to lose everything four years later in 14-degree weather.

He knows cold

John Eden's pa was an optimist. He planted groves during the Great Depression. The tenacious Edens went nose- to-nose with Jack Frost's choppers on many occasions.

"When the bad cold got here we'd be in the grove, burning tires and oil to keep our trees warm," says Eden, 85. "Everybody would work, even the kids."

On Dec. 11, 1962, the thermometer in the family grove registered 16 degrees. Even Citrus growers farther south called it quits. Not the stubborn Edens. Nor did they surrender after the hard freeze and snow of 1977. They survived the 1983 and 1985 freezes too. Orange juice, the joke went, flowed through their veins.

They thought they were ready for Old Jack Frost on Christmas Eve, 1989. But their oranges froze on the trees when temperature plunged to 15 degrees. A few weeks later the Edens bulldozed their grove.

"Now we grow pine trees," Eden says. "They don't freeze."

[Last modified December 20, 2006, 20:29:40]