Seasonal Weather Patterns in Fort Lauderdale

Summer and fall make up the wet half of the Fort Lauderdale year: the 1991-2020 normals at Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood International Airport give 22.85 inches of rain in summer and 19.08 in fall, against 8.06 in winter and 10.96 in spring (NOAA ACIS seasonal normals).

The four seasons here are the meteorological ones, three calendar months each: winter is December to February, spring March to May, summer June to August and fall September to November. Every normal on this page is for one station, which NOAA ACIS lists as FORT LAUDERDALE INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT (USW00012849, also coded FLL and KFLL) at an elevation of 3.0 feet, so a backyard in western Broward can read differently (NOAA ACIS). The normal daily high at the Fort Lauderdale airport climbs from 76.9 F in winter to 89.5 F in summer, only 12.6 degrees apart, while the normal low moves from 63.0 F to 77.4 F. Across the whole year the station normal is 60.95 inches of rain and a mean temperature of 77.20 F (NOAA ACIS annual normals).

Normals come from NOAA ACIS 1991-2020 normals; the observed columns are three-month sums from NOAA ACIS station data, which are preliminary for recent months. One detail the calendar seasons hide: the wettest three-month window at the Fort Lauderdale airport is not June to August but August to October, with a normal of 23.28 inches (NOAA ACIS). Fall 2025 shows how far one season can stray, at 24.35 inches, while the summer that followed, summer 2026, brought about half its normal, 11.52 inches against 22.85 (NOAA ACIS).

NWS Miami dates the South Florida wet season from May 15 to October 15, and its 1991-2020 wet season normal for Fort Lauderdale is 37.49 inches (NWS Miami rainy season outlook).

NWS Miami defines the wet season as the part of the year when 60 to 70 percent of the average yearly rain falls, and notes a transition period at both ends that can last two weeks or more (NWS Miami). Set against the 60.95 inch annual normal at the Fort Lauderdale airport (NOAA ACIS), the 37.49 inch wet season normal is about 62 percent, toward the low end of that range. The office also ties groundwater to the season: a dry or late wet season in South Florida can bring water shortages, lingering drought and a higher wildfire risk, while an early or very wet one raises concern about too much groundwater (NWS Miami).

Fort Lauderdale is not the wettest of the four main NWS Miami climate sites. The same outlook lists wet season normals of 44.84 inches for Miami, 37.49 for Fort Lauderdale, 36.30 for West Palm Beach and 36.08 for Naples, with Pompano Beach at 33.40 and Hialeah at 48.19 (NWS Miami). NWS Miami explains the spread: wet season rain is highest about 5 to 8 miles inland from the coasts and lowest along the immediate coastline, and daily totals vary sharply between nearby places.

The end date is a convention, not a switch. NWS Miami wrote in its summer 2026 summary that some years pass from wet to dry season in only a few days while others take a few weeks, and that tropical systems often shape that change (NWS Miami summer 2026 summary). Its Drought Update of October 1, 2026 repeated that the wet season concludes officially on October 15 (NWS Miami drought update).

NWS Miami splits the Fort Lauderdale wet season into three phases: stormy from mid-May to early July, hot with dry breaks to mid-August, then variable, with tropical systems and early fronts, to mid-October (NWS Miami).

The first South Florida phase is the stormiest. NWS Miami says strong and damaging winds, tornadoes, heavy lightning, hail and flooding are most likely from mid-May through early July, and that May to August is when most of the region's severe weather happens (NWS Miami). Surface dewpoints sit in the 70s almost every day, and where storms form on a given afternoon depends on the larger wind flow meeting the sea breezes and lake breezes.

The middle phase belongs to the Atlantic subtropical ridge, a semi-permanent high that NWS Miami calls the main influence on the wind flow across Florida. From early July to mid-August it brings the hottest weather with intermittent dry periods and episodes of Saharan dust, which dry and warm the air over South Florida (NWS Miami). The Fort Lauderdale monthly normals carry the mark of that lull. July averages 5.41 inches at the airport, against 9.55 in June and 7.89 in August (NOAA ACIS monthly normals).

The last phase, from late August through mid-October, has the most variable rain, because tropical systems and early fall cold fronts can arrive or not (NWS Miami). NWS Miami adds that it normally takes one or two organized systems, such as tropical waves, disturbances or tropical storms, to bring high totals over a wide area of South Florida. September 2026 in Fort Lauderdale, covered below, was that kind of month.

Winter is the driest Fort Lauderdale season, with a 1991-2020 normal of 8.06 inches from December through February (NOAA ACIS).

The 1991-2020 normal at the Fort Lauderdale airport is 10.9 nights a year with a low below 50 F, and 9.7 of them fall in December through February, against 0.9 in spring and 0.3 in fall (NOAA NCEI annual and seasonal normals). Recent calendar years have fallen short of that every time: from 2015 through 2025 the yearly count ran from none in 2024 to 9 in 2018, and never reached 10 (NOAA ACIS yearly counts).

Winter 2025-26 began with a forecast. On December 3, 2025, NWS Miami called for a warmer and drier than normal dry season under La Niña, with moderate confidence in one to two freeze events mainly over the interior (NWS Miami 2025-2026 dry season outlook). The dry half of that forecast held in Fort Lauderdale, where December through February brought 5.08 inches against the 8.06 inch normal (NOAA ACIS). The warm half did not hold at the end. The NWS Miami report for February 2026 shows a Fort Lauderdale mean of 66.4 F, 3.9 degrees below normal, a low of 35 F on February 1 and only 0.49 inches of rain against a normal of 2.38; the month used 87 heating degree days against a normal of 25 (NWS Miami Fort Lauderdale climate summary, February 2026). January and February 2026 each logged 7 nights below 50 F at the airport (NOAA ACIS monthly data).

The bigger dry season risk in Broward is drought and fire, not frost. The NWS Miami outlook named drought and wildfire as the main concern for 2025-26 and noted that each of the previous eight La Niña winters had led to moderate to severe drought over parts of South Florida (NWS Miami). By the NWS Miami drought update for May 7, 2026, the metro areas of Broward were in D1 (Moderate Drought) and coastal Broward was D0 (Abnormally Dry) (NWS Miami drought update, May 7, 2026).

Summer 2026 was the hottest on the Fort Lauderdale record, which goes back to 1913: NWS Miami put the average summer temperature at Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood International Airport at 85.3 F, 1.9 degrees above the 30-year normal (NWS Miami summer 2026 summary).

The same NWS Miami summary counts 78 days at or above 90 F in Fort Lauderdale that summer, against a normal of 49 for the season, with a high of 98 F on August 18 and a low of 73 F on July 11 and August 29 (NWS Miami). Broward was under heat advisories on 37 days that summer, the same count as Miami-Dade, and one Excessive Heat Warning covered Miami-Dade and Broward on August 19. NWS Miami linked the heat to the dryness: strong subtropical high pressure near Florida kept tropical moisture away for long periods, a pattern it called common in El Niño summers.

The yearly counts for Fort Lauderdale come from NOAA ACIS station data. They swing widely: 2024 brought 116 days at 90 F or more and not one night below 50 F, while 2018 had 56 hot days and 9 cool nights. Summer 2026 alone, with its 78 days, already passed the full-year totals of 2016, 2018 and 2021.

The 2026 wet season in Fort Lauderdale swung from drought to deluge: summer brought 11.52 inches, 11.33 below normal, and then September alone delivered 22.34 inches against a normal of 8.02 (NWS Miami summer 2026 summary; NWS Miami September 2026 report).

NWS Miami ranked summer 2026 at Ft Laud/Hollywood Int'l Apt, with records from 1913, as the 8th driest, and wrote that drought conditions which normally end in June persisted all summer across South Florida, along with several lightning-started wildfires (NWS Miami). June 2026 was the extreme, with 1.00 inch at the Fort Lauderdale airport (NOAA ACIS monthly data) in the month that normally brings 9.55 (NOAA ACIS monthly normals).

September 2026 reversed it. The NWS Miami Fort Lauderdale report lists a total of 22.34 inches, 14.32 above normal, while the same report prints a September record maximum of 17.80 inches from 1948 (NWS Miami). The rain came on many days rather than in one storm: 10 days had 1.00 inch or more, and the wettest 24 hours, September 16 to 17, brought 3.43 inches. The total is higher than that printed record, yet the report, which marks a set or tied record with an R, shows no R beside 22.34, so the month is not described here as a record.

Over the whole wet season the books came close to even. The NWS Miami drought update of October 1, 2026 shows Ft Lauderdale-Hollywood Intl with 37.92 inches from May 1 to September 23, 1.49 above normal and 104 percent of normal, while Miami Intl had only 26.64 inches, 61 percent of normal (NWS Miami drought update, October 1, 2026). That table stops on September 23, a week before the month ended and three weeks before the official October 15 end of the season. The same update said drought had improved slightly across the metro areas of Broward.

Last verified: October 18, 2026, against NOAA ACIS and NCEI station data for USW00012849 and the NWS Miami rainy season outlook, dry season outlook, summer 2026 summary, two drought updates and the February and September 2026 Fort Lauderdale climate reports.