City can match hottest March
Orlando last received a measurable amount of rain 24 days ago.
Orlando last received a measurable amount of rain 24 days ago, a streak propelling the city toward matching the record set in 2006 for the driest March.
A relentless run of clear skies also has contributed to another record in the works: the hottest March on record, besting a mark set in 1907.
It all depends on what happens Tuesday night, during the last hours of the last day of the month, when there’s a small chance of a tiny bit of rain.
“This potential for rainfall on Tuesday night will be a key player for how rankings end up for this month,” said Derrick Weitlich, a National Weather Service forecaster for Central Florida.
Much of the region and Florida have been scorched by dry, hot weather in March, even as Georgia, Alabama and the Carolinas have been hydrated.
“The Southeast remains a tale of two landscapes: wet to the north in recent weeks … but dry along the Gulf Coast and in Florida,” states the current report from U.S. Drought Monitor, a partnership of university and federal weather and climate watchers.
“During the first 24 days of March, no measurable rain fell in many Florida locations, including Tampa, Lakeland, and Sarasota-Bradenton,” the report states. “Those values are 2 to 3 inches below normal — and have been accompanied by temperatures averaging 4 to 6” degrees above normal.”
About 90 percent of Florida is designated by the Drought Monitor as “abnormally dry,” a precursor to being declared a drought zone. About 5 percent of the state, centering on the Panhandle’s Wakulla County, is experiencing drought.
The span of Florida across coastal Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties is not experiencing dry conditions, according to the Drought Monitor.
On March 6, Orlando got .2 inches of rain and on three other days got a trace, meaning not measurable.
March is one of the region’s drier months but still gets an average of nearly 4 inches.
Weitlich said the average temperature – averaging each day’s high and low temperatures – for March in Orlando normally is nearly 67 degrees.
But the city has burned through the month with an aver
age temperature of more than 73 degrees, putting the current March on a pace to be the warmest on record.
Weitlich said a global atmospheric pattern has blocked cold fronts from passing through Florida and otherwise suppressed the development of rain clouds, which also contributed to warmer temperatures.
“We only had one cold front move through the area, and rainfall was basically non-existent,” Weitlich said.
Don’t count on much rain Tuesday.
There’s a 40 percent chance of showers in Orlando from mid-evening until beyond midnight.
If it rains, the amount is expected to be between a few hundredths of an inch to as much as a tenth of a inch.
“Not a drought buster,” said Tim Sedlock, a National Weather Service forecaster.