Chance Of Falling Iguanas During South FL Freeze: Forecast

SOUTH FLORIDA — Frigid temperatures are heading south just days after a historic blizzard dropped 10 inches of snow in the Florida Panhandle.

This means just one rare thing in the Miami area: The chance of falling iguanas stunned into a stupor by the cold.

“The coldest air of the season is expected across Florida on Saturday morning with even the potential for falling iguanas! In Southwest Florida, lows will drop into the 30s with some waking up to wind chills in the 20s,” Matt Devitt with WINK Weather wrote in a Facebook post. “Bundle up and watch out for iguanas!”

Graphics provided by WINK show temperatures as low as 29 degrees in Pensacola ranging to about 46 in the Miami area.

Temperatures this low come with the likelihood of green iguanas, an invasive species that are prevalent across South Florida communities, falling from trees.

“When it gets this cold like this, it’s funny to those who aren’t from here to see the news people talking about iguanas falling from trees, but … it can and will happen,” said Joe Wasilewski, a conservation biologist with the King Cobra Conservancy and a member of the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s Iguana Specialist Group, previously told Patch.

He added, “If it’s under 40 (degrees), it’s gonna happen. If it’s in the 50s, they’re slow. If it’s in the 40s, they’re on the brink of falling. And if it’s in the 30s, they’re down.”

Green iguanas, which are cold-blooded, were introduced to Florida decades ago from Central and South America.

Those are areas “that very rarely dip below 45 or 40 degrees,” Dermot Bowden with the South Florida Herpetological Society, previously told Patch. “It just doesn’t happen, so they’re not that cold tolerant. So, the few times the temperatures get that low here, they get what we call cold stunned.”

Usually, that “magic number” is 45 degrees, he said. Any temperature below that, and the iguanas become inactive, meaning they’re more likely to fall from trees and other high places in which they might be sleeping or hiding.

People often mistakenly think the lizards found lying on the ground during a cold snap are dead, but they aren’t.

If anyone comes across a cold-stunned iguana, “the best thing to do is just leave them the way they are,” Bowden said. “They will recover.”

As temperatures rise, usually when they hit around 50 degrees, the lizards start moving again. It’s only when the extreme cold lasts for several days that the iguanas can’t recover, he said.

Temperatures will warm up after this recent cold snap. They could reach the upper 60s to low 70s in Central Florida by Sunday, News 6 said.