A cold rain settled over North Florida on Sunday morning as Tallahassee residents kept their eyes on the sky, hoping for the rare sight of a Sunshine State snowflake.
It was not to be.
For days, meteorologists had teased the possibility of flurries as an arctic blast pushed south, but emphasized that the setup would require near-perfect timing: the cold air would need to catch up to the departing rain shield at precisely the right moment for precipitation to turn wintry.
Winter Storm Warnings and advisories shifted westward overnight, keeping Tallahassee just outside the flake zone. Higher snowfall odds were concentrated to the west and north — from Pensacola to parts of Marianna — where forecasters projected about an inch of accumulation, mostly on grassy surfaces.
“Some people are looking forward to snow and some definitely not,” National Weather Service meteorologist Wright Dobbs said early Sunday morning before the flakes began to fly. “At least for Leon County, we can’t rule out seeing a few flakes as the last of the system moves through, but we’re not looking at any accumulation.”
When the frigid rain pushed through, neither sleet nor snowflake nor slush was spotted in Florida’s capital city. But it wasn’t a bust for everyone.
‘Let it snow’: Winter wonder takes hold in Northwest Florida
As the sun rose on a gray and white day in the Panhandle, a flurry of only-in-Florida photos began bouncing around social media.
Some featured the snowy hood of a car with a date and Florida dateline written by a finger. Others captured video of flakes falling poolside or on palm trees. There were even portraits of miniature snowmen beginning to make the rounds.
In Marianna, conditions materialized much as predicted, with rain shifting over to snow around mid-morning as temperatures hovered just above freezing. Big snowflakes fell on the city, located about 65 miles northwest of Tallahassee, for a brief time before turning to flurries.
Cesar and Maria Garcia of Orlando, along with their 10-year-old son and 8-year-old twin daughters, saw news reports of snow forecast for Tallahassee and drove up the night before hoping to experience it for the first time in their lives. They zipped over to Marianna on the morning of Jan. 18 after hearing the snow wouldn’t make it as far east as the capital.
“Right now, it’s slowing down,” he said. “But it was insane just a couple of minutes ago. We’re really happy to see this — awesome.”
The Garcias and other families, including some who drove over from Tallahassee, gathered at Madison Street Park downtown, where they frolicked in the falling flakes as the temperature hovered just above freezing.
“I feel like a human popsicle,” Paulina Garcia, one of the twins, told her dad.
Nora Menendez, 7, of Tallahassee, approaches her parents, Julie Menendez and Kevin Petersen, with a handful of snowflakes she turned into a tiny snowball on Jan. 18, 2026, at Madison Street Park in Marianna, Florida.
The snow left a light dusting on the ground, not nearly enough for real snowballs or sledding, though the kids didn’t seem to mind. Nora Menendez, 7, of Tallahassee, managed to scoop enough flakes off the ground for what might pass in Florida for miniature snowballs, which she tried to throw at her mom and dad, Julie Menendez and Kevin Petersen.
“Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!” she exclaimed as marched about.
The family has seen snow plenty of times in places north of the Sunshine State — but Nora in particular couldn’t wait to see it in Florida, especially after the snow and sleet storm of 2025, which happened a year ago to the week.
Nora Menendez, 7, of Tallahassee, sleds down a hill with a light dusting of snowflakes at Madison Street Park in Marianna, Florida, on Jan. 18, 2026.
“She was very excited,” Menendez said. “She’s been up since 5 a.m. making sure she wasn’t going to miss the snow.”
After a second burst of snowflakes, Nora managed to make it down a hill on a disc sled they got ahead of last year’s snow fall.
“It actually went down the hill,” Menendez said. “It’s so funny that it worked. I was very skeptical… It was just try it and say we did it and it went down.”
Fat flakes and 1 to 2 inches of snow throughout Northwest Florida
Further west, snow reports were even more robust. Walton County appeared to be the “fat flake” ground zero for Florida, with residents and journalists sharing video of large, wet flakes falling before dawn.
Patrick Maddox, the public safety director for Okaloosa County, said there was a confirmed measurement of 2 inches of snow in Laurel Hill in north Okaloosa.
“But most reports are coming in at a light dusting to 1 inch,” Maddox wrote in an email update.
Even the coastal areas weren’t immune from Old Man Winter’s touch. One Santa Rosa County resident shared the remarkable juxtaposition of what happens when snow meets sand.
Her photo from Navarre Beach showed snow on the railing and in the divots of sand just feet from the Emerald Coast waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
“It was bitter cold out there,” she wrote on X.
Snow falls early Sunday morning Jan. 18, 2026 at Allen Turner Hyundai on Hwy 29.
In the Pensacola area, residents also woke to early‑morning snow. The burst arrived around 4:30 a.m., according to local reporters, and although it did not match last year’s historic totals, it produced a coating of snow that began melting shortly after sunrise.
The National Weather Service reported that as of 5:53 a.m., .09 inches of snow accumulated over the past six hours at Pensacola International Airport.
Sunday’s flirtation with wintry weather comes almost exactly one year after Florida’s 2025 winter storm, which dumped more than 7 inches of snow on Pensacola and brought measurable accumulation to parts of North Florida for the first time in decades. This year’s event, forecasters said, would be far less dramatic, but still exhilarating for a state more customed to dealing with hurricane landfalls than snowfall.
The snow almost instantly began to melt as temps hovered just above freezing and a Saturday warm-up made ground temperatures inhospitable to Jack Frost’s work. By noon, snow was again practically non-existent in Florida.
As the system approached, the Florida Department of Transportation activated its winter weather plan, deploying crews overnight to treat bridge decks and known trouble spots in 16 counties across Northwest Florida.
With the region under a hard freeze warning, officials warn drivers to be vigilant for hazardous conditions and icy patches on the road Monday morning.
“Snowflakes may be falling but Florida’s state highway system remains clear and operational,” FDOT wrote on X. “Keep yourself and others safe by planning ahead before you venture out into bad weather. Check the weather, road conditions, and traffic.”
This article originally appeared on Tallahassee Democrat: See the photos, video, reports from a Florida snow day
