The Rainy Season Is Over, but El Niño Points to a Wetter Winter for Fort Myers and Naples
Southwest Florida enters the dry season still on NOAA's drought monitor — and forecasters say El Niño and a south-shifted subtropical jet stream should bring above-average rain through the end of the year, even as most of 2026's rain has already fallen.
The rainy season is over — on average it ends October 15 in Southwest Florida, and National Weather Service meteorologist Tony Hurt said the rainy pattern probably shut down a week or two ago. What replaces it this year is not the usual deep dry season. Fort Myers and Naples still register in yellow, the first category on NOAA's drought monitor, in the report posted October 30; the southeast part of Collier County, around Everglades National Park, sits in moderate drought; and practically all of Florida spent most of this year in drought conditions.
The reason for hope is El Niño. It has been in place for several months — one reason the 2026 hurricane season produced a low number of storms — and its winter flip side is a parade of stronger, more frequent low-pressure systems pushing into Florida, bringing more rain, more wind, more cloud cover and, when conditions align, severe-weather potential. 'With El Niño, we've seen indications from longer-range models and guides that overall global and regional circulation patterns are definitely pointing to a pattern with more low-pressure systems pushing through,' Hurt said. The subtropical jet stream, sitting closer to the equator than usual, adds shear that suppresses hurricanes but helps thunderstorms develop. NOAA's Climate Prediction Center is calling for above-average rain here and average temperatures through the end of the year.
The near term still belongs to the old pattern's leftovers: an upper-level disturbance is swinging through the Southeast, and Hurt noted rain chances this week run as high as 80 percent on some days. The station's live feed read 75.8 degrees Monday afternoon, with Monday's high at 76.7 and a 60 percent rain chance; Election Day Tuesday dries to a 30 percent chance under a high of 81.4, and the rest of the week warms into the mid-80s. The dry season has begun — it just may not stay dry.
