August ended last week and so did climatological summer, which is defined as the period between 1 June and 31 August.  For the most part, August picked up where July left off.  August  finished off a much warmer-than-normal summer in Florida (sixth-warmest August and third-warmest summer on record since 1895) that, in some parts of the state, paired with limited rainfall, led to drought concerns.  Abnormally dry conditions were present in the far north-central part of the state, but those conditions were largely quelled by heavy rains from a persistent low-pressure feature in the northern Gulf of Mexico during the second week of the month.  In Florida, that feature dropped its heaviest rains over coastal Taylor and Dixie Counties (where Doppler radar estimates that up to 15 inches of rain fell in isolated locations) and, to a lesser extent, farther west across the Panhandle.  That feature would later meander westward to bring the heavy rains that precipitated (no pun intended) the devastating flooding in Louisiana.  Another area of drought concern was along much of the eastern coast of the state.  Indeed, the main airports at both Daytona Beach and Jacksonville, both long-term climate stations, registered their driest summers on record.  However, very recently, just as August was ending and September was beginning, the entity that became Hurricane Hermine brought rains first to southeast Florida and the Keys and, later, the western coast.  GOES visible-satellite imagery of Hermine at around 7:15 PM EDT on 1 September.  Photo courtesy of NWS Tallahassee.

Eventually, Hermine made landfall just as the second day of September was starting in Wakulla County, ending the longest streak in the observational record without a hurricane landfall in Florida:  the last Florida hurricane landfall was that of Wilma in 2005.  It was also the first hurricane to landfall on the coastline of the Apalachee Bay since Alma in 1966.  Rains after landfall were heaviest in the Big Bend and eastern Panhandle but also brought drought relief to the eastern coast.