I'm not the only one observing how unusual this late November rain is … maybe your memories are better than mine but I cannot recall a similar weather pattern in the last twenty years in Miami. There was one big tropical storm in the late 1990's that did a lot of damage in the Keys, but it was earlier in November. Reader comments welcome …
9 comments:
South Florida can get decent rain year round. However, in November, we would typically expect rain/storms generated in advance of a cold front from a mid-latitude cyclone. The rain today is more summer/tropical in its characteristics. You've got high pressure off-shore generating a flow towards land. That's basically what the summer sea/land breeze does.
We've been talking about it all day at work. People that have been here 20+ years don't recall anything like it. Changes are coming, maybe sooner rather than later.
Feels like a cold front to me ....
This has been a strange weather year all around. The wet season started earlier than usual. Variability does happen in nature. Next year could be the opposite.
Climate change scientists predict extremes and that's exactly what we've had. A year ago, we were suffering under the threat of massive drought. This rainfall, as many have noted, is a tropical event very late in the season. Yes, the winter and cold fronts are on the way, but the changes are upon us.
I have lived in Miami-Dade since 1958 and sometimes in November we would have a couple of rainy days associated with a cold front. The tropical downpour we had Thursday starting at 5 pm and throughout the night was unusual.
Actually, 2011 was very similar, maybe even worse, setting many rainfall records for the Fall season, especially in November. Also, we had unusual tornadoes in west Broward that year.
Historically, back 3 decades anyway, we typically had a short stormy transitional period around Thanksgiving, usually lasting up to a week.
Since then, the post-rainy season months have seen a gradual uptick in cloudy/rainy/windy stretches lasting into December, the last decade especially noticeable.
Warmer, moister air, changes in ocean currents, and the gradual repercussions of an increasingly erratic "wobbling" jet stream are most of what's behind our new abnormal in south Florida, which of course the media ignores and smokescreens due to the global warming connection...
Then too, there is the increasing cloudiness here, which seems more like the midwest than the "sunshine state"...
I remember wearing a sweater to school in November, circa 1960. Most homes had space heaters and chimneys.
Speaking of cloudiness, what I've noticed everywhere is a notable absence of what we used to call blue-bird sky days. Miami is one of the few places where haze isn't omnipresent.
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