Brief cold snap to usher out an unusually dry December

Call it Drycember. Like much of the rest of the state in recent weeks, 2016’s final month has been unusually warm and stingy with the rain in South Florida.

That trend isn’t expected to change too much as the upcoming New Year’s weekend ushers in 2017, but there will be a brief plot twist. Forecasters saw a fleeting yet frigid cold snap pushing into South Florida and making itself known Thursday night, with temperatures dropping into the low 60s.

Friday will see the day edging back up into the high 60s, but Friday night will be a doozy by South Florida standards, with temperatures plunging into the 50s. This will be the

coldest temperatures felt locally in some time, forecasters said.

“South Florida will get a taste of winter to close out 2016 and kick off 2017,” a forecast from the National Weather Service’s Miami-South Florida office stated Thursday.

“Taste of ” being the key phrase. Saturday, which is New Year’s Eve, will warm up into the 70s during the day, with lows in the mid to upper 60s that night as the parties get into full swing. Bottom line: New Year’s Eve should be pretty nice.

“We’ll quickly begin to warm up Saturday and into Sunday,” said Maria Torres, a National Weather Service forecaster.

Sunday, New Year’s Day, should be a pleasant start to the year, with the forecast calling for partly sunny and breezy conditions with a high near 80 and a 20 percent chance of showers.

It’s a small chance of rain, but those of us with lawns might hope for it to pan out, given the sheer lack of moisture in recent weeks. While not technically a drought, the abnormally dry spell over the region has been the reality for the past two months largely due to the naturally occurring La Nina weather pattern, Torres said. La Nina typically means drier conditions for Florida and much of the South.

November was historically dry. According to the South Florida Water Management District, an average of 0.14 inches of rain fell from Orlando to the Florida Keys in November, the lowest tally for that month since record-keeping began in 1932.

Torres said that for South Florida, “most of the rainfall fell along the east coast metro areas for the month of November while the west and interior observed less than a tenth of an inch. Therefore, most of South Florida received well below normal rainfall for the month of November. This [will] continue into December since we haven’t had much rain this month either.”

Asked how long the dryness might last, Torres said that dry season in South Florida runs from October through May, and that it could go until early spring.

And, Torres said, 2016 will likely go down as one of the five warmest years on record for South Florida. December’s temperatures also were unusually high, even by South Florida standards.

“For the month of December for the 10-year period, this will be the second-warmest December we have had in Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale and Miami,” Torres said.

“It has a lot to do with La Nina because of the weather pattern of the jet stream.”

The Friday and Saturday morning chill will be a sharp drop from this week’s stint in the 80s. On Thursday, Miami reached 85, tying the record for the hottest Dec. 29 in the city’s history, set in 1981.