This topic should be interesting for anyone residing in a non-tropical environment and even informative for many locals that do reside here. We provide below a condensed summary of the actual weather conditions that are encountered in Florida, along with the Weather Underground website "weather sticker" to provide current conditions locally (Hollywood Beach); note that clicking on the weather sticker at the bottom of the page will route you to their website for more extensive weather information. We also have a couple of good links for checking weather radar and lightning strikes below, as most folks do not seem to be aware of them.
If you are unfamiliar with the weather in South Florida, or if you used to be and are unaware of radical changes over the years, or if you are only familiar the pretty picture that the unconscionable Florida tourism industry paints of the not-so-sunny weather in the so-called sunshine state, we provide you with the following brief summary of significant points for a short introductory lowdown.
Floridians must endure what is referred to as "the mean season", which is roughly seven brutal months of relentless blistering heat and oppressively dense humidity (it is a subtropical swamp with water on all sides...), yielding daily "feels like" heat indexes well over 100 degrees. This torturous combination of insufferable conditions is accompanied by breeze-less, stagnated "doldrums", and if the breeze does pick up it simply feels like a huge hair dryer on high heat drying out the natural sweat rolling off your skin such that it is not cooling you off any. During this deplorable seven months, 90 to 100 days is misleadingly tagged as the "rainy season" ("monsoon season" would be more appropriate), and daily thunderstorms and brief torrential downpours pelt the area with deadly lightning, after which the blazing, blinding sun comes out and turns the pools of standing water into a vaporous fog of dense, sticky humidity that bounces off of the excess of superheated concrete jungle pavement resulting in shimmering mirage-like scenes reminiscent of Death Valley (or, Death Swamp). Of course, the now-deadly (dengue carrying) mosquitoes and other yucky insects feed and breed off of these pools of water in the pestilent swamp that is Florida.
The afore-described miserable time of year in Florida is usually bordered by about one month on each end by transitional weather, usually somewhat good weather, but can be interspersed with unpleasant, stormy, alternately either cold or hot weather, always unpredictable. These transitional months are usually followed by increasingly lousy weather, usually cold, windy, and very unpleasant, particularly to natives that have finally just "acclimated" to some degree to the hot humid summer weather -- nowadays, locals have termed winter here as the "meaner season". With the lack of in-home heating sources, Florida winters have degenerated to the point that the cold is simply unbearable, and residents must rely on stand-alone "space heaters" to be able to be halfway comfortable -- the natives never "acclimate" to the cold, nor will anyone moving here -- after a few years, their "blood thins out" due to the long hot summer. And, be aware that it is getting hotter here in this already too hot for too long state; note the following two links/quotes as evidence. From an article in the Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel newspaper: "First we shivered through a record cold winter. Now we're sweating through a record hot summer. The combined average temperatures in June, July and August were the warmest ever in Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, the National Weather Service in Miami said Wednesday." Altho they did not discuss the increased cloudiness and lingering storms, this article does to some extent confirm our contention that Florida's weather is not like it used to be, and is getting lousier every year, in case you have not been here in a few years. From the NRDC article at this link note the following comment about Florida: "In Florida, 9 out of 22 stations reported their hottest average temperatures and 8 reported their hottest average nighttime low temperatures on record in summer 2010. In Fort Lauderdale the average nighttime low temperature for the full summer was 77.7 degrees. Nearly all — 21 of 22 — Florida stations reported average nighttime low temperatures among their five hottest on record in summer 2010. The long, hot summer of 2010 follows the hottest decade on record and more record high temperatures can be expected in the future as heat-trapping pollution continues to build up in our atmosphere". Not only is the summer heat getting hotter, the winter cold getting colder, the rains getting heavier, the skies getting more dreary for prolonged times, and the weather getting nastier in general, but consider that at various points in September (2010) we had three major hurricanes at the same time churning away in the Atlantic, two cat 4 (category four) hurricanes at the same time, and four cat 4's within a 20 day time frame -- that has never happened before in recorded history. If you arrived on this page as a result of a search regarding a keyword phrase such as "colder winter weather" and are not aware of the actual true reasons that this phenomenon is occurring (a great deal of obfuscation is generated about this due to disinformation invented by greedy big business congomerations and the unconscionable oil cartels), we have documented the facts in a post which you can peruse at this link. If there is any weather in the area, click on this link to the WunderMap website for what is in our opinion currently the best interactive real-time weather map available. After the map is displayed, click on the "storm tracks" box and drag the "animate" button to the right side of the scale to see the direction and speed of any storms, and note that you can zoom in and out and also move the map to other areas via click and drag. One other not-so-obvious feature is that if you click on the "weather stations" box under "map controls" that various weather station locations will pop up; you can then select a weather station location and interesting data will be presented... In the interest of providing real-time lightning information for the entire state of Florida, click on this link to a Florida lightning tracker site.
In the interest of providing real-time lightning information just for region of south Florida, click on this link to a SOUTH Florida lightning tracker site. Note that during times of thunderstorm inactivity, the display for this sight may be blank, but when lightning cranks up, it comes to life, and is/was highly accurate in real time mode. More later -- next we will elaborate on pop-up un-named tropical storms, water spouts, named tropical storms, and of course hurricanes (in the interim, try not to imagine enduring two to four weeks without electrical power for air conditioning during Florida's summer mean season following a hurricane)... Our email address: jeb@lifesacoast.com
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