Quote:
Originally Posted by Rosethorn
We came from Edwardsville, Illinois (near St. Louis). I talked my husband into this gig by promising him that Florida would be a warm and toasty place!
Right now, temperatures in The Villages and Edwardsville are somewhat similar.
Is this typical weather here? Or an anomaly?
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This is an El Niño winter which causes changes to the normal weather patterns. El Niño is a climate pattern that describes the unusual warming of surface waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean and occurs every 2-7 years.
The National Weather Service (NWS) says that during strong El Niño events, average winter temperature favors warmer than normal conditions across the northern tier of most of the nation and
colder than normal conditions over most of the southern states
El Niño generally brings above average precipitation to Florida during Fall-Winter-Spring with a higher risk of flooding. According to the NWS in Tallahassee, Central Florida averages between 8 to 10 inches of rainfall during a typical winter. But during El Niño winters, that rainfall total rises to between 10 and 13 inches. One El Niño winter season even brought 18 inches of rainfall during the winter.
Central Florida leads the entire state for above average rainfall during El Niño winters, with some locations averaging as much as five inches above normal.
El Niño events, especially strong events, have been tied tightly to well above normal storminess and strong tornadoes across the Florida Peninsula between November and April.