Recent rain does little to change dry forecast

A couple days of summer-like afternoon and evening rain to start the week offer a brief break in a dry stretch of winter.

Before the Monday and Tuesday rain, this winter without cold has brought balmy days and the kind of weather tourists pay dearly for but the shirt-sleeve afternoons also shut off rainfall, ratcheted up the wildfire risk and lowered groundwater levels.

After this week, long-term forecasts from the Climate Prediction Center show the dry trend isn't expected to change with the next month to six weeks looking like more of the same: warm days and dry weather.

This winter rainfall has been as hard to find as freezing temperatures around Hernando County.

December was Hernando County's driest in 56 years and the second driest since records started in 1915.

Rainfall records at the Southwest Florida Water Management District show .14 of an inch of rain fell in Hernando during December. Since 1915, only December of 1955 had less rain with .08 of an inch.

Rainfall has been scarce across all of West Central Florida the past three months, said Amy Harroun, a spokeswoman for the water management district. Typical rain from November through January is 6.5 inches but only 1.75 inches fell, she said.

The lack of rain shows up in lower aquifer and lake levels with lakes in Hernando County dropping about 4 inches in January to nearly 4.5 feet below the lowest point they normally are in early February.

Groundwater also is low with the level of the aquifer considered a 12 on a scale of 1-100. On the same scale of 1-100, the Withlacoochee River is an 8, the water management district reports.

Days of warm temperatures and bright sun also have dried vegetation, pushing the danger of wildfire to higher levels with some of the year's driest months just ahead.

A measurement of how easily fires start and spread where 0 is saturated and 800 is tinder is in the 500s.

The same weather pattern that kept freezing temperatures away from Hernando County except a brief spell in January also kept rainfall to the north, said John McMichael, meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

In the winter, approaching cold fronts and the storms they bring are the major source of rainfall. Few of those have made it far enough down the state to bring much rain.

"Most of the storm systems stayed well to the north of the area," McMichael said.

He said long-range outlooks show weather patterns drifting back toward the normal rainfall, but not until at least the end of March.

The lack of rain could prompt a tightening of water restrictions when the water management governing board meets on Feb. 28.

The district's twice-weekly watering schedule expires at the end of this month, said Harroun. At the Feb. 28 meeting the board could extend the restrictions, let them expire or tighten the rules to fewer days.

The district's staff is still reviewing rainfall and conditions and hasn't decided what action to recommend, she said.

Rain, for now, will stay in the weather service forecast for the next week as fronts shuffle closer. The combination of colder air and more clouds also will keep afternoons in the lower 70s, or about where they should by in a typical February.