Last week, the showers that fell on Peninsular Florida dropped enough rain in most places to take the edge off the worst drought in decades.
But in Southwest Florida, the showers last week had the same split personality as the rainfall the weekend of May 9: one town recorded four inches, while the next barely got wet.
Temperatures in the region have been unseasonably warm all year. From January through March, the heat was slightly above normal but kept getting even hotter. Fort Myers experienced its second-hottest May on record, and Sarasota reached its fourth-hottest.
Pushing temperatures even higher over Florida is a heat dome—an area of strong high pressure that sits over a region and traps hot air underneath. Because the air cannot escape, it continuously heats up, driving temperatures higher. This also raises the heat index, making conditions feel even more extreme.
Without a doubt, the heavy rains in May and again last week averted huge wildfires that were teed up by one of the worst droughts in decades. Thanks to those rains, in some places, an index used to measure the threat of wildfire is close to normal for the first time this year.
In other places, including Southwest Florida, the drought remains, and so does a diminishing but still very real threat of wildfire.
Tony Hurt, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Tampa, said the two inches of rain last week in the Fort Myers area “definitely” put a sizable dent in the drought, but weren’t enough to erase the rainfall deficit.
“Of course, with that being the most extreme area of drought that we have pretty much in the state right now, it's going to most likely take a few more rounds of days like that to get a couple more inches to get us back closer to normal,” he said. “Just looking at the actual deficit down there, say we take two inches out of that, we basically almost cut it in half.”
Last week’s showers were heavier on the state’s east coast, patchy on the west coast, and doing little to quench the drought in Southwest Florida.
Showers and thunderstorms swept across Lee and Collier counties, with Sanibel and Captiva islands, parts of Cape Coral, and sections of North Fort Myers recording four or more inches of rain.
Just like last week, however, showers in other parts of the region did little more than dampen the landscape.
“The area received much-needed rain, and beneficial rain,” Rick Davis, a NWS meteorologist, said then. “But this is not a drought-busting rain by any stretch.”
Nor did the May 9 rains represent the sustained, moisture-rich pattern that defines Florida’s rainy season. Instead, the showers were a cold-front-driven anomaly.
In May, large portions of the Everglades dried out completely, with some areas — such as parts of Everglades National Park — running dry for the first time in years. For a time, airboat tour operators suspended tours because there wasn’t enough water for their boats to operate.
Normally muddy trails throughout the area dried up under the blazing sun, and the soil cracked like a dry lakebed.
Upper aquifers in cities like Cape Coral and communities like Lehigh Acres dropped to levels where wells dried up and no-watering rules blanketed the region.
More than 2,200 wildfires have burned over 103,000 acres in Florida this year.
Even with the recent rain, the underlying drought persists. The aquifers, especially the Mid-Hawthorn that supplies much of Cape Coral, require sustained, long-term rainfall to recover.
Groundwater recharge is a slow process, and the rain that does fall must travel miles underground before reaching these critical water sources.
Greater Lee, Collier, and northwest Monroe counties, as well as a northern section of Everglades National Park, continue to grapple with the persistent, extreme drought conditions that have defined the year in South Florida, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.
How strong the threat of wildfire remains depends on whom you ask.
The National Interagency Fire Center mentioned Southwest Florida by name in its “National Significant Wildland Fire Potential Outlook” for the period from June 1 to September 30.
"Southwestern and western parts of the peninsula may be most likely to observe significant fire events until daily rain chances or a tropical system fill up waterways in the region."
Yet the National Park Service is set to light the first of three controlled burns in the Big Cypress National Preserve in Southwest Florida on Monday.
Just a week ago, nearly every county south of Interstate 4 banned outdoor burning of anything, for fear an errant spark could ignite a wildfire.
Since last week’s rains, many of those bans have been rescinded.
But not all. Glades and Collier counties still have burn bans in place, according to the Florida Forest Service. After mentions in the media that Hendry County lifted its burn ban, the capital city of LaBelle issued a press release stating that the city did not.
“The City of LaBelle’s burn ban remains in effect until further notice,” the city wrote. “This decision is based on current fire safety conditions and is in place to help protect our community.”
Environmental reporting for WGCU is funded in part by Volo Foundation, a non-profit with a mission to accelerate change and global impact by supporting science-based climate solutions, enhancing education, and improving health.
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