Fort Lauderdale saw historic rain in 2023, while the Florida West coast deals with a drought

2023 is now Fort Lauderdale’s wettest year on record and after November’s rainfall, the city earned the title of “America’s Wettest City.”

But on the other side of the peninsula, even in more-western parts of South Florida, it is a completely different story with below-average rainfall and even some drought and water-shortage issues.

Through Thanksgiving, Fort Lauderdale Airport has seen a stunning 108.91” of rain.

Normally by this point in the year we should have about 57”. That’s +51.55” or nearly twice as much as normal with another five weeks left to keep adding on.

Miami is not nearly as wet but still way above normal with 79.46” versus a normal of 64.39”. That’s about 15” more than we should have by this point.

But just down the road in Key West, we have a total of 31.14” which is about 6” below normal. This lack of rain in Key West and Marathon absolutely played a role in the historic heat we saw this summer.

Those records kept getting broken because there weren’t as many daily showers to help cool things off.

The West coast of mainland Florida is really where we see the biggest lack of rain. Sarasota and Manatee counties are currently experiencing drought.

Fort Myers has seen 42.92” which is 12.23” below normal. Last year, they already had 71.60” by this point.

Tampa has only seen 31.51” which comes in around 15” below normal versus the 60” they had by this point last year.