First Alert Weather In-Depth: Not so sunny in the sunshine state

ROCHESTER, N.Y. — A big national weather story over the past couple of days has been the amount of rain that parts of the Sunshine State have seen.

Areas near Tampa and Miami Florida have seen a massive mount of rain since Tuesday. Sarasota, saw a one-and-1000-year rainfall event on Tuesday, June 11 when it saw 6.47 inches of rain fall within the day, with over four inches of that rain falling within an hour. Since that day, many other areas have seen an absurd amount of rain.

In the Everglades, Big Cyprus has racked up over 25 inches of rain since Tuesday with many other areas within Collier County receiving anywhere between one to two feet of rain. In Miami-Dade County, parts of Northern Miami have seen over 20 inches of rain with other locations receiving anywhere from one to two feet of rain. This has lead to a large amount of flooding in the southern part of the state with more rain into Saturday morning.

Why has Florida seen this much rain?

For starters, it’s a tropical climate which means that the air is filled with moisture. Secondly, although Florida’s elevation is not as drastic as ours locally in Rochester or the Rockies Mountains, that small elevation gain has a strong influence on the atmosphere.

A wave of low pressure in the Gulf of Mexico was forcing a mass amount of moisture into the state, and with the unstable atmosphere overhead we just needed some lift to pop up heavy tropical downpours. That is where the elevation comes into play. The elevation gain from the ocean to the state’s terrain is light, but still high enough to force that air to rise, cool, and condense into clouds and heavy rainfall.

The air over Florida has been like a wet rage waiting to be wringed out. Low pressure and the elevation gain were the ingredients needed to do just that. That moisture filled air has been wringed out the past two days and will continue to do so through Saturday morning with an additional two to five inches of rain expected.