April in Naples

By NCEI's 1991 to 2020 daily normals for Naples Municipal Airport, the daily normal maximum first reads 85.0 F on April 22 and 86.0 F on April 29, and every daily normal maximum from April 29 through August 31 sits at or above 86.0 F.

Those two numbers matter because one sealer maker, Techniseal, prints them as the tops of two of its own application windows: its Natural Look (NS) Protector sheet sets 50 to 85 F for the application and the 24 hours after it, and its Wet Look Protector (WL1-2) sheet sets 10 to 30 C, a top of 86 F. SEK-Surebond's TB17 bulletin runs wider for its own sealers, 40 to 95 F day and night, and adds a 120 F surface ceiling. Which label applies on a given driveway is the product in use, not the calendar, and what temperature is too hot to seal pavers sets the makers' documents side by side.

April's own four monthly normals sit between March's and May's on every measure: 2.52 inches of rain against March's 1.88 and May's 2.76, a 74.6 F average against 70.3 and 78.8, an 83.8 F normal high against 79.7 and 87.5, and a 65.5 F normal low against 60.9 and 70.2. A crossing inside a smoothed thirty-year average, a climate normal, is not a date the weather changes for any one April; it is this page's reading of two published numbers, and sealing pavers in Naples summer heat follows the same two ceilings through the summer months.

NWS Miami, the forecast office for the Naples zone, prints May 15 as the day the South Florida wet season begins, and NWS Tampa Bay prints the same date for its own Southwest Florida area, definitions the rainy season entry sets out. The South Florida Water Management District's fact sheet places the wet season's start in mid-May as well, so April is the last full month before all three sources turn the page.

Under the district's 2018 report, though, April does not close the dry season: that report runs the dry season from November through May, so May itself still counts as dry. Whether March, April and May belong to the dry season at all is the dry season entry's question, not this page's. NWS Miami's study of records from Miami International Airport, 1956 to 1997, found the summer season starting as early as April 16 across the 42 complete years it covered, a finding for that airport, never a Naples date.

The district's water year, as its 2018 report defines Water Year 2017, ran from May 1, 2016 to April 30, 2017, so April 30 closes that one water year. May in Naples takes up the seam both offices and the district open on the far side of April.

UF/IFAS dates the spring lovebug flight to April and May. Its Living with Lovebugs publication has the flies appearing statewide as paired males and females for “only a few weeks” each April to May and again each August to September, and its Featured Creatures page puts each of the two yearly generations at about four weeks. Living with Lovebugs adds that the flies can hit outbreak numbers in one area and be missing from another, and that higher temperatures move the adult peak slightly earlier in the southern part of the state.

UF/IFAS's two publications give daily conditions for a flight rather than a calendar date, and they differ: Living with Lovebugs puts the start of flight at an air temperature of about 68 F with light of 1,500 to 2,000 foot-candles, adding that lovebugs do not fly at night, while Featured Creatures reports an older finding that temperatures above 82.4 F with light above 20,000 lux stimulated flight. Neither publication gives a date for Naples.

What that means for a pane of glass is one line, not an argument of its own: UF/IFAS writes that lovebug remains come off surfaces easily “if not left to bake in the sun”; reading that line beside a flight calendar is this page's pairing, not UF/IFAS's advice about glass, and can love bugs be cleaned off windows carries the rest of it.

NWS Melbourne's statewide lightning climatology, a ten-year average of cloud-to-ground flashes for each month from 1986 to 1995, describes April as a month when flash densities keep climbing over the Florida peninsula while sea breeze forcing begins to build along the coast. Once thunder is heard the rule does not wait for summer: the National Weather Service's rule of thirty minutes or more of shelter after the last thunder is stated on roof cleaning in the rainy season.

UF/IFAS writes that pollen season in Florida “peaks from January to June,” starting in the north and “peaking in South Florida from February to May.” That window runs through April; pollen season and why windows turn yellow in spring hold the calendar and the glass argument.

Glass carries its own condition regardless of month: the National Glass Association writes that “Cleaning tinted and reflective glass surfaces in direct sunlight should be avoided,” and the window makers PGT, CGI and WinDoor recommend cooler temperatures out of direct sun for the best results, a rule windows in the summer sun reads by the hour and the wall rather than by the date. None of it changes how a roof is cleaned; whether the calendar ever does is the question the right time of year for roof cleaning in Naples takes up.