Jan. 2 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. East Coast faces the coldest night of the season as frigid air spills south and threatens agriculture in Georgia, Alabama and the orange crop in Florida.

Freeze warnings were posted by the National Weather Service as far south as the Orlando area, which may be as many as 20 degrees below normal tonight, the National Weather Service said. The advisory alerts growers that subfreezing temperatures are imminent and may kill crops or other sensitive vegetation.

Tampa and others cities in the central part of the state are under a freeze warning from 1 a.m. to 9 a.m. local time tomorrow. Temperatures may fall below 32 degrees Fahrenheit (zero Celsius) for more than three consecutive hours, the National Weather Service in Tampa said on its Web site.

“This is a pretty significant cold snap,” Matt Keefe, a meteorologist with AccuWeather.com Inc. in State College, Pennsylvania, said in a telephone interview. “This could really put a hurting on the citrus crop.” He said the jet stream, which normally keeps the coldest air north of the Hudson Bay in Canada, is centered over parts of Alabama and Mississippi. “The cold temperatures could last for a good part of the week,” he said.

Jacksonville, Florida, may see a record low tonight, Keefe said. The Miami area will see temperatures 12 degrees to 13 degrees below normal for this time of year, Keefe said.

With this week's evening temperatures falling toward the upper 30s, strange fruit may drop from South Florida trees: non-native, invading iguanas that many residents consider more pest than pet ...

Iguanas become immobilized when the temperature drops into the 40s, as it did Sunday night, said Tiffany Snow, nuisance-wildlife biologist for the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. While they usually revive when the temperature rises, they could die if it remains below 40 degrees for three days or so, she said ...

Have a feeling its going to be a long cold one.....winter that is.

Extended cold could kill invasive iguanas


Keep it cold!!!

APOLLO BEACH, Fla. – More than 200 manatees are wintering in a balmy canal outside a power plant, the latest exotic Florida animals seeking refuge from the state's frigid temperatures.

Giant eagle rays and spinner sharks joined them in the 70-degree waters Thursday as onlookers watched them frolic.

"This is a spa for them," said Wendy Anastasiou, an environmental specialist for the Tampa Electric Company.

With temperatures up to 20 degrees below normal, some less resourceful animals needed help from humans to survive.

Turtles seem to be the hardest hit, with some 200 rescued Thursday from St. Joseph's Bay in the Panhandle. They were brought to Gulf World Marine Park, where they will stay warm in a holding pool until they can be released back into more pleasant water.

Along Florida's Atlantic Coast, 93 sea turtles were found floating a lagoon and experts said the cold water shocked their tropically inclined systems. Most were endangered green sea turtles who were sent to research facilities for some TLC.

"We try to collect them and get them to a warm location so we can check them out," said Roger Pszonowsky, a volunteer with the Sea Turtle Preservation Society in Brevard County, Fla.

Freshwater turtles can go into mud and hibernate, he said, but sea turtles don't have the same advantage and that's why they suffer from "cold stunning."

Animals that live in the water weren't the only ones affected. Iguanas fell out of trees in South Florida because the cold-blooded reptiles become immobilized and lose their grip when the temperature falls into the 40s or below.

Inland South Florida has been put under a freeze warning from 9 p.m. Saturday until 10 a.m. Sunday with temperatures expected to dip to at or below freezing overnight.

But will we see snow?

"We are forecasting occasional light rain and drizzle in our official forecast," said Dan Gregoria, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Miami. "There's just an outside, remote possibility that a little sleet could mix in with the rain."

Still, Gregoria warned that temperatures in Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties will be in the low 30s with wind chill – yes, wind chill in South Florida – in the 20s.

TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) — More than 100 manatees have been found dead in Florida waters since the beginning of the year, mostly victims of a nearly two-week cold snap.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission says the preliminary cause of death for 77 of the endangered animals is cold stress. They were found from Jan. 1 through Jan. 23.

The Sunshine State saw unseasonably cold weather starting around the first of the year that killed fish and stunned thousands of sea turtles.

Officials say the numbers of dead manatees from the cold is a record for a single year. The previous record, set last year, was 56 deaths from cold stress.

Vultures circled over Everglades National Park's Anhinga Trail, where thousands of dead non-native fish floated in the marshes.

About half the Burmese pythons found in the park in the past few weeks were dead.

Dead iguanas have dropped from trees onto patios across South Florida. And in western Miami-Dade County, three African rock pythons — powerful constrictors that can kill people — have turned up dead.

Although South Florida's warm, moist climate has nurtured a vast range of non-native plants and animals, a cold snap last month reminded these unwanted guests they're not in Burma or Ecuador any more.

Temperatures that dropped into the 30s killed Burmese pythons, iguanas and other marquee names in the state's invasive species zoo.

Although reports so far say the cold has not eliminated any of them, it has sharply reduced their numbers, which some say may indicate South Florida is not as welcoming to invaders as originally thought ...