Orlando – The rainy season is in full swing, but if you ask residents in different parts of Central Florida, you may hear some say they need more rain.
There’s a reason. We will get to that in a minute. Let’s start with the stats.
So far, July has actually been on the dry side. Sure there have been daily downpours, but when we look at the numbers it tells a different story.
The first column shows observed rainfall for July so far. The column to the right of the observed rainfall is the departure from normal. So, while there have been tropical downpours, typical for this time of year, the rainfall still comes up short by 1-3 inches compared to normal rainfall for this time of year.
Within the last five days, you can see in the image below that the focus of the beneficial rain remained mainly along I-4 back to the west with 1-2 inches of accumulated rain but only a trace from Sanford, Orlando, and Kissimmee stretching to the Brevard coast.
Why has this been happening? It has everything to do with the sea breeze. The zone where they collide dictates where the rain and storms linger each afternoon during the summer rainy pattern.
Lately, the sea breezes have been almost equal (forming along I-4) or the east coast sea breeze has been stronger keeping most of the rain over the western portion of Central Florida.
On the flip side, if the west coast sea breeze was more dominant, that would pin the majority of the action along the east coast.