I say this all the time. Most of the rain totals for the year come from just a small number of very heavy rain days and tropical events. Other than that it’s hot, sunny and dry. Half of the “rainy seasons” are very dry with little rain during that season. When you look at Florida (and Cuban/Carribean) Palms, most of them have evolved to be very drought tolerant due to these natural climate characteristics. Some are even naturally fire-tolerant.
Without multiple tropical storms and hurricanes during the year, the drought conditions overall dominate, and push us into drought, and trigger wildfires.. Last year, there was none. These are often huge systems effecting most of the state, and dousing us with a week of heavy precipitation, with only small areas being subject to the storm force winds.
I don’t understand the debate about global warming sometimes. It’s pretty obvious, as we don’t see woolly mammoths, wooly rhinoceros, and saber tooth tigers and dire wolves, running around North America these days. Huge glaciers have carved mountains and lakes in the US, and receded. Climate change defines the planet over millions of years. I find it amusing though, that every drought, every flood, every hot day, every cold day, every blizzard, every tropical storm and lack of tropical storm, on a momentary scale, is used as evidence of a political crisis by the National News and the Weather Channel.