Central Florida, and most of the state, has had an abnormally dry start to 2023.
The lack of consistent rainfall has led to drought conditions persisting over the past few months.
The pattern has shifted a little in recent weeks. We have picked up some rain in parts of the region.
Central Florida was under severe drought conditions through the end of May.
But the recent rainfall has reduced the severity of the drought conditions to moderate for most areas with the exception being parts of Florida’s Gulf Coast around Tampa.
Most of the rain came during the last week of April. This is when Central Florida had daily rounds of severe weather and large hail from a rare active storm pattern.
This stormy end to April was not the beginning of the rainy season. We are not officially to rainy season just yet.
Normally the wet season begins at the end of May.
Rainy season is when Central Florida relies on the daily sea breeze collisions from the east and west coasts to trigger daily storms.
The sea breezes are driven by the differences in temperature between the ocean waters and land.
Land heats much faster than the water. This temperature difference between the two leads to a pressure gradient between the land and the ocean.
The wind is then driven to blow from the relatively cooler air over the oceans to the warmer air over land in Central Florida.
The wind from the east coast then collides with the air and wind from the west coast. When the two breezes collide, this lifts the air upward, resulting in the development of rain and thunderstorms.
When is rainy season?
Climatologically, the rainy season normally begins in late May and runs through mid-October. But, this can vary from year-to-year.
In Orlando, the earliest onset to rainy season was in 1966 on May 5. The latest start to the wet season was in 1998, when it did not start until early July.
The average start date to rainy season for the City Beautiful is May 27.
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