National Weather Service Weather Forecast Office

The first month of Fall began with relatively quiet conditions as the Tropics remained inactive and the local weather was dominated by a combination of northeast flow and weakening frontal boundaries pushing into the region. The lack of tropical activity contrubuted to generally drier than normal rainfall amounts as seen in the graphics below. The first graphic is the total precipitation for the month which ranged from 1 to 4 inches across Inland Southeast Georgia and 5 to 10 inches across portions of Coastal Southeast Georgia and Coastal Northeast Florida along the I-95 corridor, where local Nor'easter events produced highly variable rainfall amounts especially across the Jacksonville Metro Area, with Jacksonville Airport reporting it's 27th driest September on record dating back to 1871 with only 3.58" of rainfall, while other areas along the coast had a few rainbands that developed and produced total rainfall amounts of 6 to 12 inches, with this seen most pronounced at St. Simons Island, GA which received 10.89" of September rainfall, which was its 13th wettest on record. Rainfall amounts across interior Northeast Florida were much more variable but stalled and weakening fronts did produce some pockets of above normal rainfall with 6 to 12 inch amounts along the I-75 Corridor from Gainesville southward to Ocala. The second graphic below shows the monthly departure from Normal Precipitation for September, which overall was below normal except for a few small pockets of above normal rainfall described above. Temperatures for the month were generally close to normal, about one degree or less above normal, and no new daily record highs or lows were broken during the month at any of the local climate sites. A few locations along the Altamaha, Satilla and Suwannee River Basins that started the month in flood conditions dropped back below flood stage by the end of the first week of September as the summertime wet season began to wind down.

Jason Hess - NWS Jacksonville, Climate Focal Point

jason.hess@noaa.gov