Parts of Florida may not climb out of drought conditions until sometime in the summer of 2027 as experts say not enough rain will fall over the next 10 weeks to ease conditions.
That’s right: Florida may get through an entire wet season while still being under a drought.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, put out its latest drought update on Aug. 6, and it showed Naples and Fort Myers as being in severe drought conditions.
The outlook says our region needs just over 32 inches of rain over the course of the next three months to fully erase the drought.
The problem is that the rainy season, on average, stops around Oct. 15, which means there are barely two months left in the rainy season.
“We’re running out of time to get that much rain,” said Rick David, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Ruskin.
Dry season should start in October, with drought still in place
Although hurricane season lasts through the end of November, the daily rainfall patterns that emerge each summer usually stop in mid-October.
Then the next dry season starts, and there shouldn’t be any major rain events between November and May of 2027.
“There have been droughts that have lasted for several years,” Davis said. “And then it rains more than average for two or three years.”
But El Nino is in play, and a 2016 El Nino pattern dumped more than a foot of water across the Sunshine State in just a few days.
“The good news is we’re going into an El Nino and a very strong El Nino and that would mean rain for us during the dry season,” Davis said. “We’re expecting higher rainfall totals in winter, which is traditionally our dry season. That’s why we’re more optimistic that we can get out of this drought.”
in 2016, heavy rains in January caused Lake Okeechobee levels to rise, and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers made massive lake discharges to the Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie rivers.
Waters here ran a cloudy dark brown during the height of the tourism season, and a very strong and toxic blue-green algae bloom took over the St. Lucie area in the following months.
Those El Nino-driven rains were enough to trigger a state of emergency as both coasts suffered from massive water quality issues.
NOAA is calling for average rain amounts between now and the end of October for Florida and above-average temperatures during that same timeframe.
Heat advisory may be needed the rest of the week
NWS issued a heat advisory for pretty much all of Florida on Aug. 11, as temperatures soared to 94 degrees in the Fort Myers area.
The heat index was 108 degrees, Davis said, and a high of 94 is expected her through the weekend.
“Because we have drier air aloft, our rain chances and the amount of cloud cover is not as great (as it would usually be),” Davis said. “So, our temperatures are warming up, and we have a heat index of 108 degrees or higher, and we’ll likely have that in place for the next few days.”
Again, NOAA is calling for above-average temperatures through the fall.
“We’ve had rain this last few weeks, and El Nino would bring more rainfall and cloud cover,” Davis said.
Chad Gillis is an environment reporter and can be reached by email at cgillis@news-press.co
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This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: NWS: Drought conditions likely to persevere into coming dry season
Reporting by Chad Gillis, Fort Myers News-Press & Naples Daily News / Fort Myers News-Press
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By Chad Gillis, Fort Myers News-Press & Naples Daily News | USA TODAY Network
