Shattering records: a look back at the crazy weather of 2023

2023 was one for the record books, shattering multiple weather records in South Florida.

Depending on where you live, it was either the wettest year ever recorded, or driest. It was also one of the hottest.

Perhaps the most shocking weather event, one that caught South Florida off guard, occurred on April 12, when a storm system put a bullseye on Fort Lauderdale and dumped close to 26 inches of rain in 12 hours, flooding streets and neighborhoods, stranding commuters, spinning off two tornados and causing $28 million in damage, according to the National Weather Service.

Some areas stayed flooded for a week. Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport was closed for a day and a half, and more than 1,000 flights were canceled, impacting over 60,000 passengers. City Hall was also flooded so severely that Fort Lauderdale officials decided it would be better to build a new one.

Rain in the bullseye, which encompassed parts of Fort Lauderdale, Dania Beach and Hollywood, fell at a biblical rate of 3 to 6 inches per hour. In 12 hours, 25.74 inches fell. The 24-hour total ended up at 25.91 inches, breaking the previous record of 23.28 inches, which fell in Key West on Nov. 11, 1980.

That kind of torrential rainfall seems more fit for a hurricane, but this event was not a tropical cyclone. Instead, super-wet air within three different layers of the atmosphere, and sloshing in from three directions, converged on Fort Lauderdale and fell in one small area. The rest is history.

Wet-n-stormy

2023 was also a year of wetness extremes. While Naples was on pace to have its driest year ever as of Dec. 26, and had its driest wet season ever, with only half the normal rain, Fort Lauderdale had its wettest year in recorded history.

As of Dec. 29, Fort Lauderdale had 113.61 inches of rain for the year. That’s almost twice as much as the annual norm of 60.61 inches from 1991 to 2020. The next highest year is 1947 with 102.36 inches. The number is even more impressive when you consider that no hurricanes made landfall in South Florida this year. The big differentiator was the April deluge.

November and December also provided startling storms.

In November, we got a dose of what the future may look like with sea level rise when over the course of a few days, 12 inches of rain fell on much of Broward and Miami-Dade counties. As western suburbs began to flood, king tides pushed in from the ocean.

Twenty years ago, the South Florida Water Management District would have simply opened spillways and sent the flood water to the ocean. But the large high tides downstream from the spillways, exacerbated by sea level rise, were just as high or higher than the flood waters to the west. There was nowhere for the floodwater to go.

As a result, November was Fort Lauderdale’s third wettest of the last century, with 11.23 inches of rain – about as much as Los Angeles gets in a year.

Miami had 30 inches less rain than Fort Lauderdale, 83.43, but still 16 inches more than the norm from 1991 to 2020.

The Palm Beach area was similar, with 73.98 inches for the year, 12.53 inches over the norm.

In mid December, a southern version of a nor’easter stalled over our region. Nor’easters form when cold air angles down from Canada and warm wet air angles up from the Atlantic Ocean, and the stormy seam between the two travels northeast, usually to soak the mid-Atlantic region and New England. This one sat over South Florida first, resulting in four days of rain and wind gusts over 40 mph.

Hot hot hot

2023 was one of South Florida’s hottest years on record, and also one of the planet’s. Miami and Naples both reported their hottest annual average temperature ever measured, and Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach both had the second highest average annual temperatures ever recorded.

As of Dec. 27, the average temperature at Miami International Airport was 79.9, in Naples it was 78.3,  in Fort Lauderdale it was 78.6 and at Palm Beach International Airport it was 78.

The brutal combo of heat and humidity is measured by the heat index, or “feels like” temperature. South Florida usually averages about 12 hours a year with heat indexes over 105 degrees. But this year blew that away. Miami had a record 175 hours above a heat index of 105, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach had 140 hours and Naples had a whopping 400 hours.

The NWS said that two factors likely contributed to the extreme heat this summer — record warm sea surface temperatures led to hotter air temperatures, and a relatively weak Bermuda High over the Atlantic meant weaker east winds and stronger southwest/west winds.

All told, it’s been a very hot decade. The six most sweltering years on record in South Florida have all occurred since 2015, according to the NWS.

Dodging hurricanes

The good news is that despite an active hurricane season, our region dodged major storms. Not a single hurricane made landfall in South Florida.

There were three major factors this year that combined to both boost the number of storms and diminish their deadliness, said meteorologist and hurricane preparedness expert Craig Setzer: Warm sea-surface temperatures gave us a higher number of storms; the Bermuda High was weak, which steered most storms north before they reached the U.S.; and wind shear from El Niño inhibited systems from developing in the Caribbean.

Though the heat produced a lot of cyclonic activity in the Atlantic, one factor steered those storms away from South Florida.

The Bermuda High, a large semi-permanent high pressure system, sits over the Atlantic in summer and acts as a barrier as storms travel west toward Florida. But it shifts around. If it’s weak and shifts east, storms can steer north, away from us, as was the cast this summer. If it’s strong and shifts west, it steers Atlantic storms into Florida and the Gulf of Mexico.

Looking to 2024

The National Weather Service is calling for a very strong El Niño winter, which typically means a wet winter for South Florida. The naturally occurring El Niño directs the Pacific Jet Stream south, to flow over the Gulf of Mexico, where it picks up moisture and drops much of it on South Florida during the winter months.

In a briefing this fall, NWS meteorologist Robert Molleda said a strong El Niño doesn’t just add wetness to the winter, it also means more storms. There’s more moisture, fronts are stronger, and there’s strong wind shear from the high-altitude winds of the jet stream. “This tends to lead to more occasions of severe weather,” Molleda said.

As a result, strong El Niño winters have a higher frequency of tornadoes in South Florida. The number of strong tornadoes are nearly double the long-term average, with February and March being the most likely months.

Most forecasters expect El Niño to extend into spring and then dissipate. As for hurricane season, water temperatures could lead to lots of storms, and it’s too early to predict how the Bermuda High will behave.