With the recent cold weather making the news, it made me think of another cold spell that happen just over thirty five years ago. The cold spell that just passed was more of a event for the northern part of the country since we didn't really see any really cold weather from it.
The event from thirty five years ago happen right here in this area. It was Christmas Eve 1983, which some say is the coldest Christmas Eve on record for North America. I remember it so well because I along with two friends were crazy enough to go camping during this cold spell.
I had just bought a used camper trailer, the trailer was new to me so of course I had to try it out so I talked two very good friends into going camping. The camper didn't have any gas in the tanks, and we didn't have a generator at the time so there was no heat inside the camper.
We really didn't think it was going to get that cold so we loaded up the truck and camper and headed to a small clearing in Bluff Springs, between the gravel lakes and Martins Old Mill Pond.
About dark the cold front passed and the wind started blowing out of the northwest at about 20 miles per hour and the temperature was dropping even faster than that. Another good friend came down that first afternoon and told us he would be back in the morning to go duck hunting with us. Before we went to bed we put two 5 gallon water containers in the camper in hopes of keeping them from freezing that night so we would have water in the morning.
Instead of taking clothes off to go to bed, I put clothes on, in fact I slept in a pair of insulated coveralls in a heavy sleeping bag. I got up the next morning to make coffee and found out we had two 5 gallon blocks of ice. We got a good campfire or in this case bonfire going and not long afterward the friend that told us he would come down and go duck hunting with us drove up.
The first thing he said when he got out of the truck was, “you three are idiots.” He told us he didn't know if he was going to make it down to us or not, the tires of his truck were frozen to the ground when he started to come down to the camp. I shot a duck and just as I shot it, I realized that it was going to fall in the middle of the lake. It did fall in the lake, but by now the lake had a solid sheet of ice on it and the duck slid all the way across the lake and ended up at my feet.
Back at the camp we had put a five gallon container close to the campfire so some of the ice had melted so we had water for cooking and coffee. While eating breakfast we sit around the fire and listened to the ice cracking in the lake as it froze more solid. Another friend came by later that morning and couldn't believe we stayed in the camper that night with no heat.
I guess we didn't suffer enough the first night so we stayed for a second night. The high that day was below freezing if I remember it was in the high twenties. I had a thermometer with me and according to it the actual temperature dropped to two or three degrees below zero that night. The official state record low happen in Tallahassee on February 13, 1899 and was minus 2 degrees. So unofficially we may have set a new record low for Florida.
Some years later I was talking to a friend who was a Escambia county deputy at the time and the subject of that night came up. He said he remembered that night well, he was patrolling the Nine Mile road area and a hour or so before sunrise he passed a bank and the temperature on the bank sign was 6 degrees, and he went a little ways down the road passing another bank and it had 4 degrees on it's sign.
If you watch the weather you will see that during the winter it's not uncommon at all to see a ten degree difference in the temperature in Pensacola and Century especially just after one of these cold fronts pass. I think that none of the critters that predict the weather saw their shadow this weekend and are predicting a early spring, maybe this will be true, because the older I get the less I like cold weather.
The ASHS meets at 6 P.M. the third Tuesday of each month at the Leach House Museum at 4th and Jefferson in Century join us.
