An arctic blast in the East........................damaging to orange groves in Florida..............and too much snow for a plane....................which is what was blamed for the crash..........snow........

There was a one-hour period during the early afternoon on January 13 during which the snow dropped visibility at National Airport to a sixteenth of a mile. Approximately 2-to-3 inches of snow fell during that hour. The snow ended abruptly in the mid-afternoon.

Prior to the storm, an extremely cold Arctic outbreak had spread across the eastern half of the United States, dropping temperatures to -25°F in Chicago and near 0°F in Atlanta. There was also a major freeze in the central Florida citrus groves. At National Airport, the mercury dropped to 2°F.