A sprinkling of spring warmth will quickly turn to a wintry chill in the coming days as a meaty cold front moves down through Florida, promising a flurry of seasons.
High temperatures of up to 15 degrees above normal in some areas of the Sunshine State on Friday, February 20 are forecast to dip into the 30s and 40s in the Panhandle by Monday morning. Southern residents will wake up to 50s in Miami and 40s in Naples on Tuesday.
Daytime highs early in the week are only expected to reach the 60s in South Florida and the 50s in North Florida.
“Enjoy the warmth while you can because winter will be upon us again through Sunday and Monday in the wake of a strong cold front,” wrote forecasters at the National Weather Service’s mobile office forecasting Pensacola.
AccuWeather meteorologist Brandon Buckingham said high pressure over Florida ahead of a winter storm is pulling warm air from the tropics into high temperatures later in the week and into the weekend.
Jacksonville International Airport could feel a high of 86 degrees on Friday, 16 degrees warmer than normal for this time of year.
But an area of low pressure moving out of the Rockies and into the Great Plains will then take a turn to the northeast, pulling a cold front behind it. There’s also a chance that a counterclockwise low-pressure vortex could form along the cold front near the mid-Atlantic, which could add strength to what’s pushing through Florida.
How low will Florida temperatures drop with the cold front?
Tuesday’s high temperature in Jacksonville could only reach the 50s, about 30 degrees cooler than a few days earlier.
Buckingham warned that the timing of the front could be slowed or sped up by the secondary area of low pressure.
“Fortunately, this time, it won’t approach the extremes we’ve seen previously this winter because we’re getting to a higher sun angle and there’s no dip in the colder Canadian air,” he said.
Meteorological spring begins on March 1, while astronomical spring does not begin until the vernal equinox on March 20, when the sun crosses the equator.
Between February 1 and 3, freezing to near-freezing temperatures reached deep into South Florida, killing untold numbers of invasive iguanas. Iguanas become cold-stunned when temperatures drop from about 40 to 50 degrees, but can die if freezing or cold remains for too long.
About 5,200 cold-stunned iguanas were turned into the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission during a special two-day program where they were collected and euthanized or given to licensed operators for out-of-state sale.
“We believe there were tens of thousands of iguanas that didn’t make it through that storm,” Gov. Ron DeSantis said during the unveiling of a statue of President James Monroe on President’s Day. “This will be a major visible setback to their population.”
Meteorologist Tim Sedlock of the National Weather Service in Melbourne said it was not unusual for strong cold fronts to appear in February, but they would begin to die down before reaching Central Florida in late March into April.
“It’s still possible to get fronts, but they won’t have the strength they have earlier in the season because the jet stream is moving further north,” Sedlock said.
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A Southeast Regional Climate Center forecast map for Friday, February 20, showing the departure from normal daily high temperatures.
However, his office is forecasting wind chill temperatures of 20 to 30 seconds for areas of Central Florida.
“These won’t be record lows, but still well below normal,” Sedlock said.
Will Cold Front Affect Florida’s Potential Drought Fires?
With the cold temperatures being driven by dry northwesterly winds, there is also an increased concern for wildfires, Buckingham noted.
Thirty-five Florida counties are under burn bans from Collier to Alachua, and 99 percent of the state is in some stage of drought, including 43 percent in extreme drought. A new drought report will be released on February 19.
The Keetch-Byram Drought Index, used by the Florida Forest Service, shows areas around Lake Okeechobee and to the south as the driest in the state.
The index measures drought on a scale of 0 to 800, with 800 being desert-like and 0 being saturated soil. Typically, anything above 600 is associated with drought conditions.
In a report on Tuesday, Feb. 17, everything from Manatee County to the statewide St. Lucie County and south to the Keys, it was thought to be over 600.
“We will be watching the fire risk carefully,” Buckingham said. “Right now, this cold front doesn’t look like a big rain generator.”
Kimberly Miller is a reporter for USA TODAY NETWORK FLORIDA. She covers weather, the environment and critters as the Embracing Florida reporter. If you have news tips, please send them to kmiller@pbpost.com. You can get all the best Florida content straight to your inbox every day of the week by subscribing to our free newsletter, Florida TODAY, at palmbeachpost.com/newsletters.
Mia Cruz peeks out of her pack of clothes to watch the sun rise as temperatures drop to near freezing in February 2026 in Palm Beach, Florida.
This article originally appeared on the Palm Beach Post: Cold front will drop Florida temperatures by 30 degrees in some areas