An oddly shaped precipitation gap has Floridians feeling shorted on rain.
A slew of rainstorms moved throughout the U.S. over the past 10 days, saturating dry states including California, Oregon, Washington and Texas and alleviating drought. However, a map by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) shows that the weather pattern skipped over almost all of Florida.
“Is this some kind of joke? 10 day rainfall totals here showing a big hole over Florida. Where are you El Nino?” social media user @tropicalupdate posted on X, formerly Twitter, on Wednesday morning with a picture of the map.
The map shows rainfall totals depicted in a scale of rainbow colors. The scale starts in measurements of .1 inches, depicted in gray, and traverses through a variety of colors as measurements increase. States surrounding Florida had rainfall totals over the past 10 days of nearly an inch in Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi, while totals surpassed an inch in parts of Louisiana, with eastern Texas receiving more than 2 inches in some areas.
Florida, however, remained dry save for .5 inches of rain that fell in the panhandle.
The map had social media users questioning why Florida remained dry despite it being an El Niño, a climate pattern that starts with warm water building up in the tropical Pacific Ocean west of South America. This happens every three to seven years. Last year was a La Niña year, or the periodic cooling of ocean surface temperatures in the central and east-central equatorial Pacific.
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El Niño typically results in higher precipitation, particularly during the winter months, for the southern U.S., including Florida. A graphic published by NOAA earlier this fall showed that Florida, along with Southern California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas, was forecast to have a wet El Niño season, while northern states would likely have a warm season, and Midwestern states would have a dry season.
Despite El Niño’s trends, the climate pattern doesn’t guarantee a wet winter for any of the states. El Niño rainfall averages also show that Florida can see a slow start to the season before picking up higher precipitation amounts as winter goes on.
“Averages between November and March anywhere from southern Georgia and South Carolina to Florida are above or much-above average for that four-month period,” AccuWeather senior meteorologist Paul Pastelok told Newsweek. “It’s still early in the season.”
The image shared by @tropicalupdate had some people cracking jokes about Florida’s “force field,” while others commented on the dry weather.
“‘Sunshine state’ really is taking itself literally huh?” one social media user quipped in response to the graphic.
Despite the lack of rain, Florida remains largely free from drought, according to the most recent update to the U.S. Drought Monitor Map. The map, which is updated Thursdays, showed that more than 66 percent of Florida was drought free.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.