Weather alert: Another cold one for South Florida (bad news for lizards), then warming up

It was so cold in Miami Sunday that even marathon runners bundled up before the race.

It was so cold that people stayed wrapped in bed longer than usual.

It was so cold that numb lizards fell from trees.

It was so cold that ... Well, you get the idea.

Temperatures dipped into the 40s Sunday and didn’t get past 60.

“A cold start, a cool finish,” CBS4 meteorologist Michael Smith said.

And it will be cold again on Monday morning. But then, as the sun rises, South Florida will warm up for the rest of the week.

The high on Monday will rise to 70 with lows in the mid-60s. Tuesday will get even warmer, with a high of 76 and a low around 70.

“Not a big long cold snap. Just enough to say, if you like the cold air, you got what you wanted,” Smith said.

By mid-week, the rain will be back, with a 60 percent chance Wednesday and a 70 percent chance Thursday.

Of course all this chill can't be compared to the winter storm that barreled through the Northeast, dropping 26.8 inches of snow in New York's Central Park, a near record, and killing 19 across the region.

Central and North Florida didn’t escape bone-chilling cold, and even some snow flurries. Early Sunday, temperatures plunged to 28 in Gainesville, 36 in Orlando and 42 in West Palm Beach.

The reading at Miami International Airport was 49 degrees (with a wind chill of 46) at 6 a.m. Sunday, according to the National Weather Service. And at the Miami Marathon starting line downtown, the 46-degree start was the coldest in race history.

As thousands of runners hit the Miami Marathon course, millions on Sunday were preparing to dig out of the big blizzard up North. Travel bans were lifted Sunday morning and some flights resumed in New York. Washington, D.C., airports were expected to remain closed through the weekend and schools will be shuttered on Monday.

The storm dropped snow from the Gulf Coast to New England, with areas of Washington surpassing 30 inches. The heaviest unofficial report was in a rural area of West Virginia, not far from Harpers Ferry, with 40 inches.

“This is kind of a Top 10 snowstorm,” said weather service winter storm expert Paul Kocin, who co-wrote a two-volume textbook on blizzards.

The snow fallout was still being felt at South Florida airports even after the blizzard stopped. As of Sunday evening, more than 100 flights were canceled at Miami International Airport.

This report was supplemented with material from The Associated Press.

This story was originally published January 24, 2016 at 6:01 AM with the headline "Weather alert: Another cold one for South Florida (bad news for lizards), then warming up."