Does The Dry Season Even Exist?

[MiamiensisWx]

I'm sorry if this is slightly off-topic, but I have been getting lots of rain the past few days. It has also been - and is - overcast, cloudy, and humid, with plentiful drizzles, showers, and occasional thunderstorms. While other areas are clearer, my area keeps getting rainfall many days, including today.

Are we REALLY in the dry season in southeast and southern Florida? Any thoughts on when drier weather will arrive after Gamma?

[Forecaster Colby]

Most of that is moisture from the front/Gamma. Alabama is near drought at the moment, I beleive.

[MiamiensisWx]

OK... when will more persistent, drier conditions arrive?

[Forecaster Colby]

After Gamma and the front, I think. There's a LOT of cold, dry, stable air behind the front.

[Brent]

Alabama is near drought at the moment, I beleive.

Yes... Dry and cold.

Sunday Night/Monday is looking VERY interesting. A cold core upper low with some indications there could a little precip that's not rain(very iffy). Later in the season would be a bigger issue. Otherwise, it does look like a decent rain event. We only had about .15" from the cold front.

[MiamiensisWx]

Actually, the front dosn't seem to have much drier conditions with it.


In fact, if it wasn't for the clearly defined stream of moisture along the front, the front would not even have been visible. If you look behind it, you don't see any immediate drier conditions, either. If drier conditions were there, you would see it more clearly on water vapor imagery.

Unless they are referring to another, drier, deeper front, I don't think southern Florida is in for much change to drier conditions for a while. I think it will be a slow change. We are a bit rainier in my area than what southeastern Florida typically sees in November, which is when we are normally entering the dry season. At this time of year, stronger, drier, more southerly-reaching cold fronts normally come through. However, that hasn't happened that much yet. Except for the recent front that came through many days ago which was strong in all other areas but barely did anything in south Florida - where it stalled and drew in more moister conditions - "true" November (dry season) fronts have been rather lacking, in my opinion. Unless another, more typical front comes in, we may be well seeing just more rather moist (for this time of year) and showery conditions, even after Gamma.

Any thoughts?

[MiamiensisWx]

*BUMP*

Any thoughts on what I said above?

We are getting rather atypical moisture. Also, even after the supposed front passes through (which "will", as many say, bring cooler, drier weather), moister conditions are expected to gradually return, bringing some more showers.

[Forecaster Colby]

Huh. There was alot of very dry air there a couple days ago, and now it's just gone.

[gatorcane]

Living in FL for 20+ years let me clear this up.

The dry season is typically from Dec. - May because of three factors (explained at a basic level):

1) the energy supplied by the summer heat is lost
2) the Bermuda High retreats well east into the Atlantic to near the Azores. The result is that the moisture flow off the Atlantic is lost.
3) Fronts continually pass thru that bring with them stable, dry Canadian High pressure

November is typically a transitional month. What you are seeing here is a battle between the tropics and old man winter....and occasionally, S. Florida will see a tropical storm in late November.

By December, old man winter will win out until next May which starts the transitional period back to summer.

[MiamiensisWx]

True, boca_chris... however, I've noticed that over the past few years, even in the heart of the dry season and winter (December, January, and February) I've been having warmer winters and a longer period of moister weather at times. Before this trend, drier weather typically set in/transitioned to drier conditions in middle to late November or, at the latest, early December. Now I've noticed a delay in the dry season and warmer and warmer winters in southern Florida over the past few years. Have you noticed that?

[gatorcane]

Indeed it's not just southern FL that is seeing warmer winters but most of FL. People are getting away with planting Royal and coconut palms as far north as Orlando as there has not been a hard freeze in quite sometime.

[tropicana]

Though typically Florida's dry season in the early part of the year, the years of 1983 and 1998 stand out as being exceptionally stormy (both were El Nino years). Those years, an unusually strong jet stream dipped all the way into the Gulf of Mexico and brought numerous storms to all of South and Central Florida , it seemed every other day.

( I was there in February 1983 and 14 at the time and I remember being terrified of some of the lightning storms that had occured that month).

-justin-

[gatorcane]

the last major freeze was 1989 where parts of central FL saw snow.
There was also snow in the mid 70s (1976?)...so it would seem we are due for a hard freeze pretty soon.

Nonetheless I agree with CapeVerde that our winters are less cold and less dry it seems...I think one may theorize a link between hyperactive Atlantic Basin hurricane periods and above normal Atlantic Basin winter air temps....

Actually, those in Tampa Bay will remember that Bayshore was once lined with Royal palms for many years until about 1950 where a freeze killed every last one of them. Not by coincidence perhaps, the hyperactive hurricane season of the 1930s-40s ended

[Recurve]

Every once in a while we'll have tropical moisture intrude on SFla and have a straight three-day rain event around Christmas or later. So even in the midst of the "dry season" there can be humidy and significant rain. After all, the climatological average is for a few inches of rain every month of the year down here.
We've also had summers where there was almost no rain in the Keys (even if Miami still had its land convection thunderstorms), and then have it balanced by a rainy november or december.
The first few years I lived in the Keys, 86-90, were very dry years. The place looked like Arizona. Roadsides absolutely parched and bare. Last year (2004) was also extremely dry for the entire summer (that entrenched Bermuda High thing going on). Then this year (2005) was more tropical, with a wet summer and trees and grass more lush than they had been in years -- until a lot of it blew away with Wilma.
The wetter years also seem to conincide with the blazingly hot midwest and southeast drought years. When Chicago is hotter than Miami, we're in one of those patterns.