'It Was Snowing In Florida!'

Rebecca, Paul and Gordon Griffeth and Joey Stefko used charcoal briquettes as buttons, a carrot as a nose and twigs as arms for their snowman. They added a University of Florida baseball cap and a pipe.

Tribune file photo by AUGUST STAEBLER(1977)

By STEVE KORNACKI The Tampa Tribune

Published: Jan 19, 2007

Folks across the Tampa Bay area awoke the morning of Jan. 19, 1977, to the sight of something that has not been seen in these parts in the 30 years since.

Snow covered the ground, vehicles and roads.

"I looked out the front window of our house and thought I'd died and gone to heaven," said former Pasco County Commissioner Sylvia Young of Darby. "I woke up everybody in the house. It was snowing in Florida!"

Snowball fights broke out in her yard once the children were dressed, and snowmen came to life from Dunedin to Tampa.

The five Griffeth children and neighbor Joey Stefko rolled snowballs to make the Frosty of Newport Circle in north Tampa.

"We all looked outside the big picture window at the snow and ran outside to play," said Gordon Griffeth, 43, now a Tampa Electric project administrator living in Dover. "It was the first time I'd seen snow.

"I saw a school bus pull up and stop next to the golf course by our house, and all the kids evacuated the bus and ran onto the golf course to play. It was so beautiful, so neat. We started making a snowman and somebody called The Tampa Tribune to shoot a picture."

They put a University of Florida baseball cap on its head and his dad's pipe in its mouth. Charcoal briquettes served as eyes and buttons, and a small carrot became its nose. Its arms were twigs.

"I told the kids, 'It's going to melt before Daddy gets home from work,'" said their mother, Esther Griffeth, who still lives in the house. "So I said, 'Let's put it in the freezer.'"

The snowman remained in the big chest freezer in the garage for about two years, with its head separated for a better fit.

'We All Looked In Wonderment'

The snowfall of less than one inch was Tampa's first in 15 years, and the white stuff fell all the way from Pensacola to Homestead, just 25 miles north of the bridge to the Florida Keys. The cold weather, which chilled fish in Tampa Bay with water temperatures of 50 degrees and air temperatures in the 20s, was nothing compared to the frigid weather up north. Cincinnati recorded a record 28 degrees below zero, and the Ohio River froze.

"We all looked in wonderment at the snow," said Doug Snow of Tampa. "Some people told me, 'Snow, you brought this on!'"

Gaye Tibbets was photographed by The Tampa Tribune at the corner of East Grand Central Avenue (now Kennedy Boulevard) and Parker Street after writing "SNOW" on the windshield with her fingertip. Another motorist inscribed: "'77 TAMPA?"

All the snow in what is supposedly a subtropical climate was hard to fathom.

"It wasn't snowing in Largo, where I was living at the time," said Mike Sanders, a Clearwater historian and real estate agent. "But I talked to my dad in Clearwater and he said, 'They are making snowmen in Dunedin.' I said, 'Yeah, and I'm Santa Claus.'"

Michael Jeffries, then a social studies teacher at Buchanan Middle School in Tampa, decided to let his students have fun with the snow.

"Amazingly, they did not close the schools," said Jeffries, now an assistant professor of information systems at the University of Tampa. "We were told to keep the kids in the classrooms, but I just let them out."

He roared with laughter and added, "They rolled in it, threw snowballs. It was gone in a couple hours and I figured it was their only chance to experience snow."

Automobiles lost control on the slick roads, and University of Tampa director of public affairs Grant Donaldson recalled Interstate 75 having its share of accidents.

"The bridges on I-75 were frozen," said Donaldson, then a Tampa Times business reporter. "People would spin out of control on them, and roll when they got back onto pavement without ice." Dade City residents lined up outside Kiefer's Pharmacy before dawn to buy film for their cameras, and owner Al Kiefer opened 15 minutes early at 6:45 a.m., according to a Pasco Tribune story.

A Picture Perfect Sight

Young said she shot three or four rolls of film that day.

"The hills and the valleys were covered with snow," she said. "It covered the strawberries and cabbage we were farming. I measured it as 3 inches deep, and it took days to melt."

The snow didn't get as deep or last as long south of Pasco County.

"I was throwin' hay at Boot Ranch about 4:30 that morning when it started snowing," said Lou Angelwolf, then a Dunedin High School senior and now a local standup comedian. "Everyone ran around like crazy and we had the world's quickest snowball fight and hand-sized snowman before it melted.

"It was pretty to see snow on palm trees. It was just beautiful."