Rainy season turning out rather dry in Southwest Florida

The Everglades is looking at above-average rains this summer, but conditions are relatively dry in Lee and Collier counties. 

While the 16-county South Florida Water Management District is averaging an inch above normal for this time of the year, Southwest Florida is nearly 6 inches below normal for the same period. 

The 2020 rainy season will wrap up in mid-October and will be followed by a seven-month dry season. 

Our region gets about 56 inches of rain in an average year, according to South Florida Water Management District records. 

The district met Thursday to discuss, among other things, water levels in various parts of the district's water management system, also referred to by some as the historic Everglades. 

"Since the middle of May we’re about 5 inches above average and the majority of those rains have been on the East Coast and in the central part of the system, with drier conditions on the West Coast," said John Mitnik, the district's top engineer. 

For the year, Lee and Collier counties have received, on average, just under 30 inches of rain, which is nearly 6 inches below average for that time period, according to water management district records.

Rainfall amounts impact everything from largemouth bass fishing in the freshwater portion of the historic Everglades to the amount of water available for release to the Caloosahatchee River during the dry season. 

It impacts water quality, which impacts coastal fishing, hotel rental fees and real estate prices. 

Too much rain typically means a flooded landscape and large water releases. 

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The historic Everglades starts just south of Orlando, flows to Florida Bay at the southern tip of Florida and includes Lake Okeechobee as well as the Caloosahatchee River. 

Rivers like the Caloosahatchee and St. Lucie were artificially connected to Lake Okeechobee  to drain parts of the Everglades for farming and development. 

Canals were dug to fend of flooding, and to send water from the natural systems to farm fields and East Coast towns. 

Today those canals work too well and prematurely drain water that historically sat on the landscape for months, or even years. 

Calusa Waterkeeper John Cassani said there's more to assessing the wet season than just looking at the numbers. 

More:Florida farmers battle rising water and salt as sea water floods fields

"You have to look at the timing and the duration (of the rainfall)," he said. "What we're seeing now is one extreme or the other. Extreme dry or extreme wet, and that effects salinity levels in the estuary when we get basin runoff, but we really don't have an estuary if it's freshwater all the way to Sanibel." 

Lake Okeechobee releases in recent years have sent freshwater blasting 15 miles or more into the Gulf of Mexico. 

Cassani said flows in the river are optimal for salinity levels in the estuary. 

But there are still concerns about another toxic algae bloom coming from Okeechobee. 

"The salinity envelop is good, but I think what's on everyone's mind is with these pulse releases (from Lakes Okeechobee), are we getting cyanobacteria from the lake," Cassani said. 

A blue-green algae bloom has raged on much of the lake most of this summer, and there is always a fear in the Fort Myers-Cape Coral area that Lake Okeechobee releases will again bring a bloom to our area. 

That's what happened in 2018: conditions were so bad in the Caloosahatchee and Lake Okeechobee that several counties were declared to be in states of emergency. 

Mitnik said conditions will be rainy and warm over the next several days. 

"A lot of the rainfall will be centered on the West Coast (Thursday) and (Friday), but as we get into the weekend the rain will move to the central part of the district and then the East Coast," Mitnik said. 

Meteorologists with the National Weather Service in Ruskin are calling for similar conditions for Southwest Florida over the next week or so. 

"We're going be looking at afternoon showers with sea breezes," said John McMichael, an NWS meteorologist. "You're probably looking at chances of rain in at least the 50 to 60 percent chance of rain each day."

McMichael said this latest patchy of rain conditions should linger here for days. 

"It's probably going to stay over us well into next week," he said. "Overall there's going to be numerous showers and thunderstorms developing each afternoon, so really just typically Florida summer weather."  

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Climate Prediction Center is calling for above-chances of above-average rain between now and November. 

Connect with this reporter: @ChadGillisNP on Twitter.