South Florida woke up to stunned iguanas and an crisp chill in the air as a cold front sent temperatures plummeting into the 40s and even the mid to high 30s in some parts. Not everyone is on board with the sudden dip in degrees.
7News cameras captured people rocking their winter wardroves as they made their way down Las Olas Boulevard in Fort Lauderdale, Friday morning.
“My sweater, my socks, my long johns. Now look at me,” said a woman wearing a head scarf and heavy jacket. “When I get up this morning, it was so cold.”
How cold? The lowest recorded temperature came in from the Redland at 26 degrees Fahrenheit. Homestead and Kendall also reported temperatures in the 30s.
Coral Gables, Davie and Southwest Ranches weren’t far behind with 40 degrees.
The feelings are mixed when it comes to this brieg taste of the arctic freeze.
“We love it. It’s the best part of the year,” said a man in a gray hoodie.
“I walked in today. It’s definitely cold,” said a man in a baseball cap and light gray hoodie.
The “feels like” temperatures were down in the 30s in parts of Miami-Dade and Broward.
“I haven’t seen the lizards fall out of the trees yet, but I heard that happens,” said the man in a baseball cap and light gray hoodie.
The iguanas did fall, like a stiff, unconscious resident in Lighthouse Point.
“We hear this thud, and we had no idea, like, where the thud came from. We looked over, and it’s an iguana,” said a nearby resident who identified himself as Ben. “I thought it was dead. I don’t know what it was, but then I realized it was actually frozen. I didn’t think that that actually happened.”
Oh, but it does.
Ben, a generous neighbor, took matters into his own hands. He went into his home, then came back out with an extension cord and a blow dryer. Several munutes later, the iguana rose from its slumber.
“I’ve lived in Florida, born and raised on this street and lived here my whole life, and I just – I’d never seen a frozen iguana before,” he said.
Ben can cross a frozen iguana off his nucket list, on South Florida’s first real cold front of 2026.
Temperatures finally crossed into the 60s at noon, thanks in part to warm sunshine, but meteorolgists cautioned to keep dressing in layers, since the cold snap is expected to linger until at least Monday, when another cold front is forecast to arrive on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Day.
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