He said listeners who didn't see or feel those fine granules were calling the station and asking why they were playing that song in the middle of January.

"Cause it's snowing outside!" Shaw told them. "It was quite a day."

Ferris Thompson, of South Miami, a district inspector for the Florida Department of Transportation, was driving to Fort Pierce on Interstate 95 that morning.

"I remember the snow flurries hitting my windshield; the farther north I got, the more snow I saw settling on the side of the road, " said Thompson, now 79 and retired.

The couple snapped a photograph that shows Joan sitting in the family car, the windshield half covered with snow. On the dashboard is that day's newspaper.

Back home the next day, Thompson and his wife, Joan, hoped for a repeat. They got up before dawn and went outside in their heavy coats, waiting for snow. It turned out Jan. 20 proved to be an even colder day, as temperatures dipped into the mid 20s, but no snow fell.

Snow fell on an eventful week in Miami-Dade — and the United States.

Newly elected President Jimmy Carter's inauguration was scheduled the following day; Miami-Dade commissioners had passed the controversial county ordinance banning discrimination against gays the day before, setting the stage for a bitter battle between singer Anita Bryant and homosexuals.

And on television, a highly anticipated mini-series was about to air. In Miami, Dorothy Jenkins Fields, 64, founder of the Black Archives and then a school librarian, said the snow is a blur to her. That's because the mini-series Roots, based on Alex Haley's book, was about to premiere.

"Yes, snow in Miami — I remember it but it didn't leave much of an impression on me because I was mesmerized with Roots. The snow came and went, but Roots stuck with me."

For forecaster Biedinger, the excitement of correctly forecasting snow was quickly forgotten at the weather bureau.

"We were very concerned about the South Dade farmers who were about to get hit by more cold nights, " he said.

The snow and the low temperatures put Florida's citrus and vegetable industry in a death grip. Both were nearly wiped out, and some 150,000 migrant workers lost their jobs in the state — including 80,000 in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach. Then-Gov. Reubin Askew declared a state of emergency.

Officially, snow in Miami is not on the weather record books.

"It was an immeasurable amount that fell, so it's written down as “a trace” of snow, " said Biedinger, 66, now retired and living in Titusville.

Only once before, in 1899, had something resembling snow fallen over South Florida. And not this far south, only down to Fort Pierce.

Could snow fall here again?

Yes, say local weather forecasters.

"It would be rare, but the way I see it, it happened once, so it can happen again. If the same weather conditions line up, we could have the same scenario, " said Robert Molleda, a meteorologist and warning coordinator with the National Weather Service in West Miami-Dade.

Miami's snow fall during the Blizzard of 1977 was caused by a combination of two arctic cold fronts — one passed the region on Jan. 16 followed by a second faster-moving one in the middle of the night the day it snowed.

That second front chilled the region and moved so quickly that moisture — usually ahead of such fronts — instead lagged behind, setting the stage for the snow.

The precipitation formed in the clouds did not have enough time to melt before it reached the ground. If it had happened in the middle of the day, there probably would not have been snow, the weather service says today.

Biedinger said he's always considered his accurate prediction "a novelty thing."

"It was a kick to do it one time, maybe the only time in the history of Miami, " Biedinger said.

It also made Biedinger a celebrity in certain circles.

"For the rest of my career, " he said, "I was known in the weather office as the guy who predicted snow in Miami."