ORLANDO, Fla. – We’ve got some rain headed this way by Wednesday late afternoon or early evening. How much of it falls is still in question as we closely monitor the setup responsible for bringing a much-needed dose of moisture to town.
While we’re seeing the chance a few areas pick up an inch or so of rain during this event, it won’t quite do much for us in terms of increasing drought conditions across the Florida peninsula.
The drought monitor releases every Thursday and with the latest update, the dryness just continues to expand through not only Central Florida but much of the state altogether.
An extreme drought setup is already in place for folks in parts of the Panhandle, and several of our own local counties are under severe dry conditions, thanks to this lack of rain.
It feels like we moved from extensive rainfall bouts that produced some hefty floods in 2025 to long periods of sunshine and dry weather.
We’ve covered a few of the variables likely responsible for creating such a flip-switch. I want to discuss a bit of why that same switch could flip and start creating more heavier periods of rain and even storms toward March and April.
I’ll explain, and I will also add the disclaimer while it’s not guaranteed given this is a fairly extended seasonal outlook, some of the parameters we typically watch to determine when storm season could tick up a bit in the activity scale are already moving into place.
Right out of the gate, water temperatures in the Pacific. Namely, the tropical Pacific where we find our individual ENSO regions. There’s four of these sections that we’ve labeled starting right off the west coast of South America and reaching toward the International dateline of approximately 180W longitude.
There’s been some very noticeable warming that’s occurred off the South and Central American coasts. Could this be an early sign of our eroding La Nina? I think so.
As the Pacific Ocean begins to warm, that’s going to pay dividends to what the jet stream and our localized pressure patterns do near to the southeast U.S.
We might not see a dramatic swing in conditions as things evolve down to our southwest, but we’ll slowly but surely start to see the side effects as time continues on through March, April, marching toward May and the commencement of summer.
This is what we like to describe as a “hangover” effect. You switch something as big as the temps of a massive body of water, things don’t entirely turn upside down at the drop of a hat, there’s some catch up that has to be done.
Imagine you set foot in your kitchen and start cooking your favorite dish. I’ll use my “famous” pulled pork that I love to make for the family during Christmas time as an example. You toss the seasoned meat and other ingredients into your crockpot, set it and forget it. Next thing you know, some time has passed, and now you’re picking up that lovely aroma across the room.
As the atmosphere begins to detect the growing thermal energy generated by the Pacific Ocean, things like jet streams, highs, lows, troughs, ridges begin their adjusting too.
That could generate more frequent pushes of moisture and storms for our area and our neighbors just to the north.
I’m also seeing lots of warmer water pooling up in the Gulf beside us. Combine that with leftover warmer than average waters from last hurricane season off the east coast in the westernmost Atlantic, and we’ve got a lot of rising motions that are focused close to our state.
I know the talk of water temps might sound oddly suspicious, but I assure you this isn’t another story on hurricane season. That will come soon, trust me.
But water temps as well as available moisture influence our day-to-day weather just as much as the hurricane season! When you disrupt the current state of the big picture weather pattern with things like warm water, a shift from dry to moist, and a digging more aggressive jet stream things tend to get busy.
The rain event we’re about to receive Wednesday and Thursday are already a pre-cursor to similar trends we might see going through late winter and early spring.
So let’s hope we can get some rain in here over the coming weeks because for the time being, our dry spell and mild winter set up isn’t likely changing. But as we get closer to the turning point between winter and spring, that’s when I’m fairly confident our forecast models will start to change too alongside with what we see or feel when we wander out our front doors.
Also, don’t get me started on what this next fall and winter could look like if/when El Nino conditions surface across the tropical Pacific.