Fort Lauderdale has recorded its wettest September since records began, with 20.75 inches of rain measured at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport by 23 September.
The previous record was 18.40 inches, set in September 1998. Records at the airport run back to 1913.
Normal rainfall for the whole of September is 8.61 inches. The month passed that figure, and then passed it again, with a week still to run.
The National Weather Service attributed the total to “multiple weather disturbances that repeatedly carried deep tropical moisture across the region”, producing frequent thunderstorms and heavy downpours across Broward County and northern Miami-Dade County.
The figures are preliminary.
The rain did not fall evenly. Some locations in northern Broward and Miami-Dade recorded more than nine inches in the space of a few days, and by 23 September the month was already running at more than twice what the whole of September normally brings.
What makes the month remarkable is what preceded it. Summer 2026 in Fort Lauderdale was the eighth driest since 1913, with 11.52 inches of rain, some 11.33 inches below normal.
It was also the hottest summer on record at the station, at an average temperature of 85.3F.
The station’s 113-year record therefore now holds two entries from 2026 within three months of each other: one of its driest summers, and its wettest September.
Those two halves of the record belong together, and they add up more neatly than anybody has so far acknowledged.
The summer was 11.33 inches short. September has so far delivered 12.14 inches above its own normal. The debt has been settled in full, inside one month, with 0.81 inches over.
This newspaper does not regard the summer as dry. We regard it as unpaid.
The distinction matters for the record books. A drought implies rain that never existed. What South Florida experienced was rain in arrears: the water was always going to arrive, and it simply arrived in the wrong ledger period, which is a matter for the calendar rather than the climate.
The Department of Unnecessary Research notes that settlement was made early. The balance fell due at the end of the wet season and was cleared by 23 September, with a week in hand and a modest overpayment that will presumably be carried forward.
There is a further implication our analysts are obliged to record. If a dry season is an unpaid balance rather than an absence, no rainfall deficit anywhere is a loss. It is a receivable, ageing quietly, and the National Weather Service has been keeping the ledger since 1913.
On this reading the eighth-driest summer since 1913 and the wettest September since 1913 are not two records at all. They are one transaction, entered twice, in the manner of all honest bookkeeping.
Fort Lauderdale did not lose 11.33 inches of rain this summer. It was in arrears.