I spent a few days in Florida before Thanksgiving, right about the time the weather turned cold around here. While high temperatures in Pennsylvania, Delaware, and New Jersey were in the 30s, I was wearing shorts as temperatures in central Florida reached the 60s and 70s.

This large north-to-south temperature difference is typical during the cold months. Florida is surrounded on three sides by large bodies of water which really don't cool down that much during winter. So even when cold air invades the eastern United States in winter, temperatures in Florida are moderated by the nearby Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico.

In summer, it's a different story. All that water surrounding Florida that didn't get that cold during winter doesn't heat up that much during summer. This keeps Florida summer temperatures from overheating. They're regularly in the 90s, but we're usually not that far behind. So although it's usually still warmer in Florida than it is here during the summer - and certainly more humid - that temperature difference between here and there isn't nearly as large as during the winter.