Q&A of the Day – How Wet Has Florida’s Dry Season Been?
Each day I feature a listener question sent by one of these methods.
Email: brianmudd@iheartmedia.com
Social: @brianmuddradio
iHeartRadio: Use the Talkback feature – the microphone button on our station’s page in the iHeart app.
Today’s Entry: Hi Brian, I always enjoy your show. I work from home and listen via my smart speaker...it’s one of the nice advantages of not having to go into an office! You mentioned that it’s been one of the wettest “dry seasons” we’ve had. I’ve lived here for almost thirty years and can’t remember a wetter winter than this one. Please do a breakout of this. I’d be curious to know just how unusually wet it’s been.
Bottom Line: Florida’s traditional dry season, (south and central Florida anyway), runs from October through May. During that cycle the average monthly rainfall is about 4 inches (compared to 5.2 inches on average year-round) with January and February representing the peak of the dry season with an average of about 3 inches of rain in each those two months. In other words, as we’re heading down the back half of January – we're right in the middle of what’s usually the driest time of the year. That makes the regular and often heavy rainfall we’ve seen especially unusual. Just how usual...
Here’s the typical rainfall during the dry season in West Palm Beach (in inches):
- October: 5.1
- November: 4.8
- December: 3.4
- January (through the 17th): 1.7
Here’s what’s been record this season:
- October: 5.3
- November: 4.5
- December: 3.9
- January (through the 17th): 2.3
Obviously, rainfall totals will vary a bit based on location, but using West Palm Beach as an example shows that three out of the four months of the dry season have been wetter than usual with December and January proving to be far wetter than usual. Ordinarily West Palm Beach would have experienced exactly 15 inches of rain at this point in the dry season. There’s been exactly 16 inches of rain, or about 7% more rainfall than usual thus far. Part of what is probably contributing to the feeling of this being an especially wet dry season, which as illustrated – it is, is also how dry the dry season has been in recent years. In the La Nina cycle, which we had been in for the better part of eight years, Florida’s dry season had often been especially dry. At this same time a year ago West Palm Beach trailed the average dry season rainfall total by three inches, meaning we’ve already had four more inches of rain this season compared to last. And that’s likely to continue because not only is Florida no longer in a La Nina weather pattern, but rather we’re remaining in its antithesis, the El Nino weather pattern.
Three of the top five wettest dry seasons have coincided with El Nino (with the other two occurring in neutral weather patterns). As long as the El Nino effect continues to influence our weather pattern, and it’s expected to do so throughout the duration of our dry season, it’s likely we’ll continue to see above average rainfall throughout winter and spring.
The strong El Nino pattern is also responsible for much of the unusual severe weather we’ve had throughout the dry season so far as well – including the storms that spawned the tornadic activity experienced in Martin County recently. The most exaggerated example of just how strong this El Nino cycle has been, and what the potential for rainfall due to it could be, has been on full display in Fort Lauderdale, where the city easily had its wettest year on record last year with 114 inches of rainfall during the year – shattering the previous annual record of 102 inches in 1947. What’s most notable about that record is that it also happened without the impact of tropical storm of hurricane activity during hurricane season. What the Fort Lauderdale example also illustrates is just how big of a difference geography can make in El Nino driven cycles. West Palm Beach and Fort Lauderdale are only separated by 45 miles, yet Fort Lauderdale experienced 36 more inches of rain than West Palm.
All told the Palm Beaches experienced 17% more rain, or about 12.5 inches more than usual last year with a total of 78 inches for the year and with the fast start this year with a rather wet dry season and the El Nino effect expected to remain strong through at least the first half of this year, we can expect more of the same. If we’re fortunate, El Nino will stick around through hurricane season again this year. If it does it would figure to be wetter than usual throughout the year yet again, but also likely without the threat of a hurricane making its way to the east coast of Florida yet again. I think we’d all take that that tradeoff, though I do know many snowbirds who’re wondering where the sun is this season.