Crestview slowly thaws out from historic winter blast

“We still have icy conditions and people are driving like we don’t have icy conditions,” McCosker said in frustration shortly after noon today.

While major roads such as State Road 85 are mostly clear, shaded parts of many side roads like Stillwell Boulevard, Redstone Avenue and Old Bethel Road are still icy, he said.
“It’s not black ice, it’s flat-out ice,” McCosker said. “Our officers are trying to keep people from driving on the icy roads. Schools are closed for a reason: it’s still not safe to travel. (Driving now) is putting first responders at risk.”
Enzo’s havoc is widespread. For example, since the storm began, scores of semi-trucks and other vehicles have slipped off parts of Interstate 10 and U.S. Highway 90. Early this afternoon, snowplows and road graders were being used by Florida Department of Transportation workers to remove ice and snow on I-10 to restore traffic. Schools in Okaloosa County are closed until Monday.

According to the National Weather Service in Mobile, Alabama, Winter Storm Enzo dumped 9 inches of snow on Crestview and 10 inches on Jay and Milton. Elsewhere, it dropped 8 1/2 inches on Baker, 7 1/2 inches on Fort Walton Beach, 8 inches on Navarre, and 2.8 inches on Destin.
Nearly all of those totals broke the state’s previous record snowfall from March 6, 1954, when 4 inches fell near Milton.


Crestview’s last snowfall before Enzo occurred on Dec. 8 and 9, 2017, when about a half inch of snow fell, NWS Meteorologist Jason Beaman said.
Beaman said a “perfect combination” of ingredients led to the record-setting Winter Storm Enzo: A few days before Enzo arrived, the region was blasted with a very deep-cold air mass “straight out of the Arctic.” A storm system then came from the west, and a low-pressure system that developed over the Gulf of Mexico brought sufficient moisture, but no warm air, into our area over the cold air mass.

Beaman noted that the 7.6 inches of snow Enzo brought to Pensacola easily broke that city’s former record of 3 inches set in 1895.
“Does it happen often? No,” he said about profound snowfalls in the Florida Panhandle. “It may take another 100 years to happen again, or it may take 20 years. You never say ‘never.’”
Crestview’s daytime high temperature for today is 44 degrees, 17 degrees below the average daily high of 61.
On Sunday, the morning low for Crestview is forecast to be 33 degrees, with a daytime high of 59. The daytime temps are expected to increase from there, with a high of 69 degrees next Thursday.

McCosker, who became Crestview’s police chief in late 2019, is a native of New York state. He said the last time he saw snow before Enzo might have been in 2018, when he attended the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia.