[Proud90sKid]

Southwest Florida: it has been a cooler and much wetter than normal winter so far. Highs have been around 66-78 and lows typically in the 50-60s. Noticeably more overcast days than sunny. Winter has been markedly more cloudy than usual. This is typically Florida's dry season and typically it is sunny a lot of the time this period of the year. But not this year. There also have not been any major Indian summers this winter so far. Indian summers here are usually caused when a persistent ridge forms in the upper atmosphere, which pushes the jet stream northward and prevents any cold air from moving in. Temperatures can actually become summer-like with highs in the upper 80s and maybe even a reading of 90F, but no summertime thunderstorms. There were a few days of warm weather a couple weeks ago, but not a pattern. This is because El Nino (the warm phase of an oscillation in tropical Pacific temperatures) is causing enhanced convection in the central and eastern Pacific, producing a stronger than normal subtropical jet stream over Florida from the Pacific which allows for cooler conditions to persist in the far south CONUS. It has been overcast and rainy much of December and January but in the past week the sunshine has improved. El Nino 2023-2024 is considered strong. El Ninos of this magnitude occur about once every 15 years or so on average: sometimes more (the most recent being only in 2015-2016), and sometimes less but averaging around 15 years. Florida is very much experiencing conditions that it naturally trends toward during El Nino: more overcast, rainier, and cooler than average. Probably the most robust response our weather has had to El Nino since 1997-1998. This winter isn't the coldest, but is one of the "coolest" if that makes sense. We haven't really had cold blasts from the arctic like in 2018, but the subtropical jet is keeping cool air south and there has been a relative lack of the very warm days (in winter 2018, it also got near 90F at one point). Instead, there has been less fluctuations in temperature, and with more cooler but not cold days, which is consistent with what Florida trends towards during El Nino.