South Florida's Rainy Season Officially Kicks Off May 15
MIAMI (CBSMiami) - It's time to add the umbrella or raincoat to your everyday wardrobe essentials because South Florida's rainy season will officially begin on May 15.
Before highlighting the Rainy Season Outlook, let's go over what happened during the dry season which runs from mid-October through mid-May.
At first, it was a wet start for the dry season. Who can forget Tropical Storm Eta? Eta impacted South Florida in early November and caused major flooding. Therefore, Eta contributed to the very wet beginning of the dry season. Over 25 inches of rain fell in the east metros areas of South Florida. But characteristics of La Niña started in December and so the weather became much drier in South Florida for the winter month and most of the spring.
Now moving on to the Rainy Season Outlook. The National Weather Service (NWS) of Miami is forecasting for above-normal rainfall this season. However, forecasters say that the confidence in this rainfall outlook is between low to medium due to the fact that rainfall totals are highly dependent on tropical systems that may impact South Florida.
Forecasters also expect the flood risk to be on average this rainy season. There are 8 to 10 flood events, on average, across the southern Peninsula every rainy season.
When it comes to the temperatures, the forecast calls for above-normal this rainy season. In fact, NWS meteorologists are forecasting for monthly average temperatures to run between half to one degree above normal.
Forecasters also noted La Niña pattern is on the way out as there is an 80% chance for neutral conditions to establish during the first three months of the rainy season. A neutral pattern means it is neither El Niño nor La Niña.
In addition, during a neutral pattern, the second part of the rainy season may be wetter. So from August through October, weather conditions are forecast to be wetter than the previous months. Long-range forecasting models are also indicating the possibility of the return of La Niña characteristics during the end of the rainy season or by end of the year which will also validate a wetter-than-normal forecast for the end of the rainy season and start of the next dry season.
So what is a typical weather pattern in South Florida during the rainy season?
High temperatures are typically in the upper-80s or 90s and low temperatures are in the mid-70s or 80s. Along with constantly high dew-point temperatures which produce very humid days during the summer. Also, scattered thunderstorms are typical along the coast, or offshore, during the nighttime hours. And during the day, scattered storms occur in the afternoon hours after daytime heating takes place.
Also, during a typical rainy season, the stormiest phase with severe weather occurs from mid-May through early July. Then from mid-July through mid-August, there are dry periods that lead to the hottest days of summer in South Florida. At the end of the rainy season, from late August to the middle of October, rainfall accumulation is highly variable and depends on local tropical activity or lack thereof. This period of the rainy season is also during the peak of hurricane season.
