Florida's rainy season closes with a split verdict: drought in some basins, record flooding in others

A season that didn’t rain evenly

Florida’s 2026 rainy season has closed on the calendar, but the National Weather Service’s own numbers show the state did not get the same storm. Some basins finished short. One finished underwater. For a coast that depends on groundwater recharge and river flow as much as Cedar Key does, the unevenness matters more than any single statewide average.

According to NWS Melbourne, Orlando International Airport logged just 2.57 inches of rain in September against a normal of 6.37 inches, a 3.80-inch deficit, even though thunderstorms were observed on 21 days. Only 14 of those days produced measurable rainfall. Orlando’s four-month wet-season total, June through September, came to 19.39 inches, well below the 1991–2020 normal of 29.57 inches for that stretch.

Then came November

That deficit didn’t hold everywhere. In the first days of November, after the climatological rainy season had already ended, a stalled upper-level disturbance and persistent onshore winds dumped historic totals on southern Brevard County. The NWS Weather Prediction Center recorded preliminary totals of 24.69 inches near Malabar, 22.75 inches near Grant-Valkaria, 22.00 inches near Palm Bay and 20.84 inches near Melbourne Beach. Melbourne International Airport logged about 13.70 inches. The NWS described rainfall amounts in parts of the county as consistent with a 1-in-100-year event, a 1% annual chance at a given location, not a once-a-century guarantee.

Melbourne took in nearly half of its average full wet-season rainfall in four November days. Titusville closed the 2026 rainy season with 38.83 inches, against an average of 29.4 inches. The NWS warned that flooding along the St. Johns River basin could worsen after the rain stopped, as runoff continued moving downstream, a reminder that river-basin flooding lags well behind the storm that caused it.

West-Central Florida split, too

Tampa Bay’s wet season ran its own course. NWS Tampa Bay data show Sarasota-Bradenton recording 9.76 inches in October against a 2.76-inch normal, the fifth-wettest October on record there. Tampa took in 5.47 inches, more than double its 2.34-inch normal, its 11th-wettest October. St. Petersburg logged 4.99 inches against a 2.16-inch normal. Yet Tampa’s full June–September wet season still finished dry overall, at 26.39 inches against a 30.24-inch average. Fort Myers, farther south, took in just 1.21 inches in October against a 3.08-inch normal. NWS Tampa Bay marks October 10 as the typical close of the rainy season across most of West-Central Florida.

What the data don’t cover, and why that matters here

The NWS reporting cited in this account comes from Melbourne, Tampa Bay and Jacksonville forecast offices. It does not include rainfall totals, drought-monitor readings or river-stage data specific to Levy County, the Suwannee basin or Cedar Key. That gap is worth noting rather than papering over: whether this coast ended the wet season in deficit, like Orlando, or saw a late-season surplus, like Sarasota, isn’t answered by the source data in hand.

What the statewide pattern does establish is that Florida’s dry season is starting from uneven ground. Cold fronts are replacing the daily summer thunderstorm cycle, humidity is dropping, and some river basins, including the St. Johns, are still absorbing water from a storm that arrived after the rainy season officially ended. For communities along the Suwannee and the Gulf coast, the lesson from Brevard County is procedural as much as meteorological: a dry-season start on the calendar does not rule out flash flooding or prolonged river rises from a single late-October or November system. Local water managers and residents watching well levels or river gauges on the Nature Coast should treat the “end” of the rainy season as a date on paper, not a guarantee of drier conditions underfoot.