ORLANDO, Fla. – The anticipated cold snap we’ve been monitoring for several days made its presence felt across our region early Tuesday morning.

A cold front, initially stationed over the central United States during the weekend, swiftly moved south, crossing the Florida peninsula by early Monday.

Although the polar air mass lagged slightly behind, once it arrived, temperatures dropped sharply, plummeting dramatically during the late afternoon and early evening on Monday.

Many locations in our area recorded overnight lows that shattered previous records.

By Tuesday afternoon, temperatures across Central Florida remained stubbornly below 59 degrees. Such cool afternoon conditions haven’t been experienced in quite some time.

Once again, a few spots actually set some records.

Orlando managed to blast right through a record low originally set back in 1932, nearly 100 years ago! The record back then on this day was 39 degrees but at the coldest point of the morning time frame, Orlando came in three degrees below the original mark at 36 degrees.

This is not only setting the newest record but absolutely demolishing the old. While it may not seem like much to get our temperatures to drop as quickly as they did, let alone fall an additional three degrees below a record, it takes a LOT of effort on the atmosphere’s part.

As of right now, we’ve also likely set the record for “coolest” high temperature on this day in Orlando. Our lowest high temperature was set back in 1986, around 70 degrees. Today we topped out around 57-59 in some spots.

Orlando wasn’t the only hot spot (or should I say cold?) for some record-setting temps. Daytona Beach’s previous record was in 1956, which was tied today at 35 degrees.

Sanford, just like downtown Orlando, swooped right past their earlier record set in 1962 with a low temp observed this morning of 36 degrees.

Despite being right up against the east coast, where we typically see a little bit of what’s called “modification” of air temperatures (I promise you right now, we’re not talking artificial modification), Melbourne in Brevard County ROCKED their old low record for Veterans Day.

In 1962, Melbourne held a record of 42 degrees at the coolest portion of the morning. Tuesday, we saw an observed temperature of only 37 degrees. That’s a 5 degree drop in comparison to the old record!

Our local weather pattern did some work to really squish temperatures as low as they could go, despite the warmer water surrounding us on all sides.

To circle back on my modification usage – when meteorologist’s use a term like “modify,” it simply means you take air from one part of the globe and put it somewhere totally different, it slowly evolves to become like the new environment with which it’s found in.

The polar high pressure moving overhead right now driving our temperatures down is a great example of this, and why we’ll be warming back up almost immediately come Wednesday afternoon.

The high pressure that was yanked south by our polar front jet stream came from the central Canadian provinces. It’s now hanging out with all of us southern folk over Mississippi and Alabama, continuing to slowly nudge eastward toward northern Florida.

As you can probably imagine, the typical air we’d see in Canada is as far from what we usually feel here in Central Florida as could be.

So overtime, the polar high pressure changes. It modifies thanks to its surrounding atmosphere.

By Wednesday at this very time, between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m., we’ll be back into the upper 60s and low 70s across the board. Thursday will be even warmer. Forecast high temps by the weekend have us right at the Florida gold standard of low 80s for many of us in the afternoon.

Another detail to note – the winds are going to continue tapering through the day Tuesday.

The pressure difference between the cold front well off to your east over open Atlantic water, and the center of the clockwise spinning high pressure moving in is weakening. So wind speeds will drop over the next 18-24 hours diminishing those harsh “feels like” temps.