August in Naples

NOAA's 1991 to 2020 climate normals for Naples Municipal Airport put August at the top of the twelve-month table on nearly every measure this page compares: the heaviest normal rainfall, 8.89 inches; the hottest normal average, high and low temperatures, 83.3 F, 90.9 F and 75.8 F; and the most rain days at both published thresholds, 18.7 provisional days with at least 0.01 inch and 13.5 with at least 0.10 inch.

August's first quartile and median of nonzero monthly rainfall totals, 7.59 and 8.76 inches, are also the highest of the twelve. The one exception sits one column over: September's third quartile, 10.76 inches, runs higher than August's 10.02, so on that one NCEI statistic September, not August, tops the table.

Inside the month, the airport's daily normal high reaches 91.0 F on every day from August 5 through August 19, the highest reading anywhere in the year's daily record, and its daily chance of measurable rain, flagged provisional, peaks at 59.0 percent on August 20 and 21, also the year's highest. About 47 percent of the month's normal rain has fallen by the 15th. Every figure here is a thirty-year average at one airport, and any one August can run above or below every one of them.

NCEI's provisional count puts 18.7 days of August with at least 0.01 inch of rain, the most of any month, and from June 24 through August 31 the provisional daily chance of measurable rain never drops below 50 percent. ICPI's Tech Spec 5 condition for most sealers, “Allow at least 24 hours without moisture or surface dampness before application,” plus the 24 dry hours after the coat that SEK-Surebond's weather bulletin asks for, is by that count a harder stretch to find in August than in any other month, a reading of the numbers rather than any maker's word, since the documents read for this page name a condition and not a month; how that plays out is on sealing pavers during the rainy season.

ARMA's prevention bulletin for asphalt roofing ties algae to the places where moisture tends to dwell on a roof surface, and GAF's technical bulletin states that “Dew is the primary moisture source.” August's numbers put both warmth and moisture at their Naples peak among the measures this page compares, though neither bulletin, as read for this page, gives a rate or a month in which growth speeds up, so this page states the conditions and stops there. The rate question is answered on why algae grows faster in Naples than up north.

What eighteen wet days leave on a pane once each one dries is taken up on whether rain makes clean windows dirty.

The National Hurricane Center's Atlantic season opens June 1 and ends November 30; the Center says most activity occurs between mid-August and mid-October, a window that opens inside August. Its Table 1, the average pace of the 1991 to 2020 seasons, puts the third named storm by August 3, the fourth by August 15, the fifth by August 22, the first hurricane by August 11 and the second by August 26, and NHC cautions that individual seasons can vary considerably from those average dates.

NWS Miami's hottest phase ends in mid-August, and the office's third phase, late August through mid-October, is the one it describes as bringing “higher rainfall variability due to potential tropical systems and early-fall cold fronts”; the same office names August, September and October the peak months for tropical systems that can affect South Florida. The season's own statistical peak, September 10, belongs to September, one page ahead.

A storm inside that window is a question for a licensed roofing contractor, a window's maker or installer, and an insurer, never a reading from a calendar; what a roof, a set of shutters or a pane looks like once one has passed is on a roof cleaned after a hurricane, hurricane debris stains, windows spotty after a storm and windows before shutters. The term itself, and the season's own bookends, are defined at hurricane season.

UF/IFAS's life-cycle figure for the lovebug names the August to September emergence the summer generation, with larvae that take about 120 days to reach it, against 240 days for the winter generation that emerges in April to May, and its Featured Creatures entry puts each of the two flights at about four weeks. The flights themselves, a few weeks each statewide, at outbreak levels in some areas and absent in others, are described at love bugs.

Neither UF/IFAS publication read for this page, Living with Lovebugs or the Featured Creatures entry, names Naples or gives a date inside those months, so this page prints the statewide months as UF/IFAS prints them and no more.

Those same weeks are when UF/IFAS's own line applies to a pane: lovebug remains come off surfaces easily if they are not left to bake in the sun. How that reads on glass, and why the acidity finding belongs to automobile paint rather than glass, is on whether love bugs can be cleaned off windows. A house with nobody in it through these same wet, warm weeks is its own question, answered on what the summer leaves on a seasonal home before the owners arrive.