Fall Is Delayed at SRQ. Estimated Arrival: Oct. 22.

Fall officially started on Sept. 22. Up north it showed up on schedule, with leaves. Here, the thermometer at Sarasota Bradenton International hit 90 on Saturday, and the low for the entire day was 81. That is not autumn. That is a bath someone forgot to drain.

Hence the myth everybody repeats around this time of year: Florida doesn't have fall.

So I checked. I pulled every daily high and low recorded at the airport for the last 27 falls, 1999 through 2025, from NOAA's Applied Climate Information System (the same daily numbers the National Weather Service lets you look up in its NOWData tool). Then I wrote down the date each fall milestone first happened, every year, and took the middle date.

The fact: fall comes. It flies in late, it arrives in pieces, and nobody announces it at the gate.

The arrivals board

Typical (median) first date at the airport, 1999-2025:

• Oct. 13: the last 90-degree day. The earliest it quit in that stretch was Sept. 23, 2001. In 2019 it hung on until Nov. 7. In 2024 it made it to Nov. 6.
• Oct. 16: the first night at 65 or below. The first morning you can open a window and not immediately regret it.
• Oct. 20: the first high under 80.
• Oct. 22: the first night under 60. This is the big one, the one people mean when they say "it finally cooled off." The National Weather Service office in Ruskin tracks it too, on a Sarasota-Bradenton record going back to 1911, and puts the long-term average at Oct. 19. Last year it held out until Oct. 31.
• Nov. 1: the first high under 75 and the first night at 55 or below. Both land on the same median date, which feels coordinated.
• Nov. 16: the first high under 70.
• Nov. 22: the first night under 50. This is when the hoodie stops being decorative.
• Jan. 2: the first night under 40. In four of those 27 winters, it didn't happen at all between August and late January.

Delays are common

The averages make it sound tidy. It isn't. The first night under 60 has shown up as early as Oct. 2 (2001) and as late as Nov. 23 (2015). In 2019 the airport didn't record a single high under 80 until Nov. 13.

So treat Oct. 22 like any estimated arrival time on a screen at an airport. A suggestion. A mood.

Where we are right now

From Sept. 1 through Sunday, Oct. 4, the coolest night at the airport was 67 degrees, on Sept. 27. That's as close as fall has gotten. It's still circling.

Over those 27 years, the first ten days of October averaged a high of 87.8 and a low of 71.6 at the airport. The last eleven days of the month averaged 83.8 and 66.1. So October does cool off by about four degrees, start to finish. Around here, that counts as a season.

The manatees run their own schedule

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission says manatees start heading for springs and other warm-water spots once the water drops below 68 degrees, which is why November is Manatee Awareness Month. They don't check the airport. They check the water. Honestly a better system.

One piece of trivia for the cooler

The earliest freeze on that Sarasota-Bradenton record, per the same Weather Service page, was 27 degrees on Nov. 17, 1940. Nobody's planning around that one.

How to handle the wait

Put a sweatshirt in the car around Oct. 22. Worst case, it rides around with you for a month, like the reusable grocery bags. Keep the sunscreen next to it. Both are in season until further notice.

— Sandy