Florida Geography & Climate

Florida is a low limestone peninsula between the Atlantic and the Gulf, about 450 miles long, and the flattest state in the country — nowhere reaches 350 feet.

The limestone underneath is porous, which produces two of its defining features: more than a thousand freshwater springs, among the largest concentrations on earth, and sinkholes, which open without warning in the centre of the state.

The southern third holds the Everglades — not a swamp but a river of grass sixty miles wide and a few inches deep, flowing imperceptibly south from a large shallow lake to the sea.

Beyond the tip, the Florida Keys curve a hundred miles southwest along an old coral reef, linked by a single road, with the continent's only living barrier reef offshore. The panhandle in the northwest is a different landscape again: white quartz sand and pine forest.

Florida has two seasons rather than four: a hot, wet one from May to October and a warm, dry one from November to April. The far south is genuinely tropical; the panhandle is subtropical and does occasionally freeze.

Summer afternoons bring thunderstorms almost daily, usually brief and heavy. Florida is the most lightning-struck state in the country and the strikes are a real hazard on open beaches and water.

Winter is the reason the state exists as a destination — warm, dry and sunny, with occasional cold fronts that drop the north into the single figures Celsius.

Hurricane season runs 1 June to 30 November, peaking from mid-August to early October. Storms are forecast days ahead, so the practical risk is disruption and evacuation rather than surprise.