What's luckier than getting no storms?

Hurricane season is over!

That’s a milestone we tend to forget during storm-free years.

Take a deep sigh of relief:
December is the only tornado and hurricane-free month.

Hurricane season runs from June 1st to November 30th.

Not that there weren’t any storms out there.

The 2011 Hurricane Season is tied for the third busiest on record with 19 total storms, 7 of them hurricanes and 3 of them major hurricanes, i.e., Category 3 or higher.

What made it unremarkable in our collective psyche is that none of them made landfall in Florida. It’s now been six seasons since a hurricane strength storm made landfall in Florida.


Floridians have a love hate relationship with hurricane season:

“We could use the rain but not the wind” is commonly said. When it comes to fall rain that saying rarely holds true.

Click on map to review Florida hurricane history storm by storm.

Wilma (October 2005) was the last hurricane-strength
storm to make landfall in Florida. 

This year it did.

But the reality is we usually get neither or both.

Kirby Storter Strand

Can you see the boardwalk parking lot?

Above Tamiami Trail looking south
November 2011

Mysterious rain band

An interpretive ranger handed me a small rectangle of newspaper cut out from the Naples Daily News. It showed year-to-date rainfall totals for Ft Myers and nearby Naples:

Naples 37.62 inches
Ft Myers 65.29 inches

Can you see the mysterious rain band?

Photo taken from Naples Beach in October 2011

The two towns are both on the same coast, only thirty minutes apart …

“Could their 2011 rain totals really be that far apart?”


Along with the piece of paper the same interpretive ranger informed me of a meteorologist from Florida International University (FIU) who months earlier had alluded to a mysterious rain band that rain across the state from Ft Myers to West Palm Beach, but did not include Naples, and thus explained the lack of rain to the south.


I track rainfall in Naples and Ft Myers using a four-gage average for both towns, and thus was curious to see if the disparity was in fact real, and not an artifact of a single station.

My numbers show the same trend, although not as far apart:

Naples 34.4 inches
Ft Myers 51.52 inches

Naples (blue) had a subpar wet season
compared to nearby Ft Myers (red).

As for the rain band theory ...

I’m still trying to track that FIU researcher down.

Mangroves moving in

It's only a matter of time
before these cypress (foreground)
and mangroves (background) collide.

Looking south towards 10,000 Islands.

Make room for mangroves!

Above the mangroves looking down

Bridge over Henderson Creek
at Rookery Bay NERR

Below the mangroves looking up

The fish tank inside Rookery Bay NERR
is designed with faux prop roots to highlight
the underwater habitat that mangroves creates.

Another point discharge

Henderson Creek Canal
discharges into downstream Rookery Bay
October 2011

End of point discharge in sight

As the hydrologist paddles, the distance from bank to bank shown in the video below may seem substantial, say, a good few hundred feet across ...

But in the business we know it simply as a point.



The goal of the Picayune Strand Restoration Project is to take that point and spread it out across a line several miles. We have a name for that, too:

It's called sheetflow.

Red Navel Oranges

Sliced open, these have the look
of a ruby red grapefruit inside

Mathematical seed limit!

Never judge a book by it's cover ... 

And no I’m not talking about The Geology of Florida by Randazzo and Jones, although I must admit it's a great read.

Florida-grown Red Navel Oranges

I’m talking about not judging an orange by its peel,

And more specifically – the many varieties of Florida oranges.


Florida oranges – its true – do not have California good looks, but trust me:

Those California varieties have a beauty that runs peel deep.

Florida-grown Sunburst Tangerine

As easy as they are to peel and pull apart, and eat – all in sequence – without a drop of juice sticking to your hands ... therein lies the problem: the Californian orange – which in technical circles better known as a Washington Navel – is a tamed down version of what an “orange in full” was bred to be.

In terms of variety, juiciness, and taste ...

It's Florida that's the Napa Valley among citrus connoisseurs.


Last I checked, you can’t eat the peel, but you can fresh squeeze out the juice on the inside ... by the glassful if it’s a Floridian, but only drop by drop for a Californian. I wasn't surprised to see the Honeybell Tangelo ake the prize as the “preferred” form of Florida citrus on the recent poll I posted on the journal – I am a big fan myself,

But I was disappointed to see the Dancy Tangerines not get a single vote.

That's a lot of seeds!

In season now are the Sunburst Tangerines. They are billed in the literature as “easy peelers with few seeds.” My hands-on research revealed the former to be true -- easy peeling indeed -- but as for the latter I was spitting out as many seeds as I was eating tangerine.

Total seed count was forty four!

Florida citrus is good for what ails you.
The price is right, too.

Never judge a Florida orange by the cover ...

Seed counting is a great way to hone your math!

Naples Pier

Look for early next week
to get cold on the pier.

Extreme winter at Naples Pier

We have a couple cold days are forecast ahead.

To feel the brunt of the cold front you'll want to go to Naples Pier.  The video below provides a quick look at the pier under typical summer and extreme winter conditions.




What do I mean by extreme winter in Naples?

Answer: Everyone is hunkered down wearing their warmest winter fleece!

Definitions: Water cycle

Tamiami Canal near Oasis

"Blue" Friday, not black

Talk about piling even more on a loaded Thanksgiving Day plate!

Not two football games, but three?

Rooting for watersheds
is the way to go!

Isn’t it true that so often we default to sports to define who we are as a community? And isn’t it so that in some mystical sense our sports do bring us together in one stadium – under one roof, or in the open air as it may be – at Miami Dolphin’s home turf, or Sun Life Stadium as it is so named – to root on that intangible yet tribally ingrained entity known as “our side?”

The best seat in the house is of course in your own house in front of the TV. Who wants to fight through traffic to see from 200 feet away (if you’re lucky) what you can view in the high definition comfort of your own living room with super slow motion, instant replay and camera angles galore delight?


But why not cheer for our watersheds instead?

And I don’t mean sitting in front of the TV to do so. There’s any number of trails, water ways, overlooks, and country corridors ready and waiting for us to see and experience them first hand. After all, it’s our watersheds which define us as a community most. And the waters that run through them in the form of the water cycle are its pulse.

Who needs a seat in a pricey sport stadium
when you can sit for free a perfectly good
cypress dome instead?

Forget about Black Friday ...

Get out and ride the water cycle instead!

Never ending dessert!

It's quality not quantity ...
Okay, on Thanksgiving its both.

A Wednesday Thanksgiving?

Remember that year Thanksgiving fell on a Wednesday?

Wasn't that the same year it snowed in Naples, too?

You know it's a cold Thanksgiving in Naples
when daytime highs don't break above 70° F.

That hasn't happened in over 40 years (see graph above).


I'm not saying that won't ever happen:

But we can probably rule out a snowy Thanksgiving in Naples ...
Especially on a Wednesday.

A thousand feet high
looking south over
Loop Road

Whatever your weather and whoever your company:

Happy Thanksgiving to all!

Dwarf and prairie

How tall is a dwarf?
This one was about 10 feet tall.

Unnoticed milestone

Naples marks a major winter milestone this week:

The long-term average daily low temperature, i.e., how cold it gets at night, officially drops below 60° F.

Average daily lows drop below 60° F
starting in November and lasting into March

On the other,

The past few nights have been warmer than usual in the low 70s.


That could make this a milestone that not many people notice.

(Other than a few stalwart meteorologists.)

Monthly front frequency

Of course it's the frontal boundaries
that bring us our dry season rains.

Dreaded stalled front

Winter dry season means dry air and lots of sun, right?

Not in the case of the dreaded stalled front.

South Florida misses out on many fronts ...
Not that North Florida cares.

For as much as a cold front that passes clear through the southern bottom of the peninsula is praised among the locals as "a gift from the heavens" and "those meteorologists on the continent can do no wrong," stationary fronts have a reputation of raining, albeit a slow off and on drizzle, on south Florida's sunny-all-winter parade.

Skies turn leaden and humid air from the tropics takes hold.


Note to the Polar Weather Service:

Put a little more juice on the next cold front, please!

Florida citrus by the bushel

Indian River Navel Oranges ...
Pomegranates to the left. 

Florida winter arrives!

Just when I was finally starting to figure out whether or not Florida actually has a fall, it inexplicably happened:

I went into the local grocery store to discover winter is here!

Florida oranges are back!

How did I know?

Florida oranges and grapefruit were back on the shelves.

An animated seasonal time table
of when the varieties come in.

Navels are the first of the season.

Can you guess the last?

Cypress-strangling fig?

Can you see the rotting trunk on the swamp floor (on the left)?

Cypress-squeezing python plant?

Do strangler figs really strangle their host?

The grip on this one looks kind of loose.

This is one of the two twin trees in yesterday's post.

The one below looks a little tighter:

Not much room to breathe.

Cypress trees have trouble
shrugging the figs off.

This one appears to be the botanical equivalent ...

of a constricting python snake bearing down.

The evidence seems strong:
But is the fig to blame?

As for the rest of this cypress tree,

It's just beside the stump in the swamp below.

Cypress snag

A snag, yes, but still tall

Oldest trees of Collier County

Is there a limit on how high ...
a cypress tree can grow?

Old Growth Cypress Trees
as seen on Big Cypress Bend Boardwalk
in Fakahatchee Strand State Park
November 20111

Consider that first they had to avoid getting cut down in the 1940s and second they had to withstand the mighty gales of a hurricane force storm. The former will cut them down to square one and the second will snag them at the top.

These two escaped the first but not the second.

Swamp music?

fluted trunk
of cypress tree

Simultaneous wet and dry season view

Who says you can't be in two places at the same time?



This video was taken in early November after October's last big rain.  That means you're looking down at wet season water but seeing the reflection of dry season sun and clouds above.

More proof that the water cycle is a time traveling machine!

Sun-swallowing swamp

Can you see the shallowly-
submerged sun reflection below?

Swamp definitions: fall

Some say that fall the season doesn’t exist in the swamp.

But consider the case of its water cycle as measure up in the pines.

Can you see the dry ground
in the pines starting to expand?

At some point each autumn,

We witness the optical illusion of pine islands starting to expand.


That’s not the land rising, of course …

But rather the slow-motion plunge of the water that surrounds them on its way down. Or in other words, the start of the water cycle’s annual decline, i.e., fall has begun! An inch drop is barely noticeable in the center of a cypress dome – up over the boots is up over the boots – but up in the pines it’s the difference between a shallow splash and a spongy squoosh of dry land ready to emerge.

Green pine islands mark the high ground of the swamp.
Grey-brown "rolling hills" are cypress domes
where water is deepest and stays longest.

Then there’s the curious case of the cypress.

They are still standing, yes, and as alive as could be, but because their needles have dropped and their branches exposed as grey, i.e. all their needles have fallen, it gives the optical illusion that the trees are dead.


But there’s a catch, too:

Waters fall too slow to actually observe in the moment and cypress needles apparently fall to the ground when there is nobody there to see.

How long and how deep?
The center of this cypress dome
was up over my knee.

Photos from November 2011

It’s not a traditional fall to be sure …

But hydrologically speaking, that’s how autumn in the swamp got its name.

Mosaic below!

The swamp's mosaic
jumps out in fall

Slow as sheetflow

"Now you see it ...
Now you don't."

Now (above) and then (below)
in the same pond apple forest
in September and April 2011

Okay, the water won't disappear that fast.

In fact, October rain has a way of staying around the most.


The reason for that is evapotranspiration.

Or rather, lack thereof.

"Now and then"
as graphed on 20-year record

Cooler fall temperatures have arrived and plants having entered their dormant "less thirsty" low sun light phase means it will take months in the swamp for the water slowly to recede ...

Nobody said sheetflow was fast!

Mud Lake in full

More watery than "muddy"
thanks to the October rains

Single source swamp?

Are springs the source of the swamp?

Answer: No.

Sheetflow swings high and low,
whereas springs gush steady all year long.

The swamp gets all its water direct from the sky. As shown on the hydrograph above, that means a feast and famine diet. Or in other words, lots of water all at once in the summer and then slowly receding and disappearing water through the winter and spring.


As for the springs, they aren't fountains from nowhere ... although they seem that way when you see them. Almost like a water fountain left in the "on" position, springs flow non-stop and quite constant all year long.

The Floridan Aquifer is their source.

From left to right: sheetflow, spring flow and Lake O flow (at Moore Haven S-77)

Was Lake Okeechobee ever the source of the swamp?

Answer: Yes, or partly, or at least to some degree ... from the Ft. Thompson Falls pooled Caloosahatchee which fed seeps that that drained south into cypress strands and marshy sloughs. Today, the S-77 controls water leaving the Lake in that direction -- which hasn't been open all summer -- and the Ft. Thompson Falls are gone.

That's why each night when the clouds aren't there the swamp thanks its lucky stars that you can't close the control gates to the sky.

Another purple plant

Beauty Berry
as seen November 2011
at Rookery Bay NERR

Plant breaks its own "cardinal rule!"

Cardinal air plant is red, right?

At least that's how it got its name.

Can you see the purple petals?

But the petals of its flowers are purple

The cypress in the background are knee deep.


October rains got the dry season off to a wet start!

Egret and shadow

As seen on same day
as the sand sculptures

Ocean City, Florida?

Compared to August at the beach in Ocean City, Maryland ...

The Gulf of Mexico at Naples Beach is summer-like warm.

By Maryland sea shore standards,
Naples beach is warm all year long.

The only difference?

I'm done swimming in the gulf for the winter.  It's way too cold!


Cold of course is a relative term. Northerners will be flocking the beaches soon and -- so long as the sun is out -- won't hesitate to go in for a dip. Then again they have Vermont-chilled molasses running through their veins. Compare that to us south Florida year rounders:

Our blood is as thin as water!

In the order we saw them:
a cat, an alligator and a mermaid.

The good news is ...

There's plenty to do on the beach besides swim.

I for one always admire a good sand sculpture (or three.)