Hurricanes and Tornadoes That Hit St James City, FL

The nearest NOAA station with 1991–2020 climate normals is Fort Myers Page Field Airport, FL, 15 miles east of St James City at 15 feet. August is the warmest, with an average high of 92°F and low of 75°F; January is the coolest, at 75°F and 54°F. August is the wettest at 10.4 inches of precipitation on average and February and November the driest at 1.8 inches; the year adds up to 57.5 inches over 77 days with at least a tenth of an inch. June to November, the hurricane season months, bring 75% of the year's precipitation (43.4 of 57.5 inches); the other six months are drier. September has brought the most of the 75 tropical systems that passed within 75 miles (23); a normal September there has highs of 90°F and 9.0 inches of precipitation. Highs reach 90°F on about 120 days a year, almost all from April to October. A night below freezing comes less than once a year on average. That 57.5 inches is more than at 88 of the 125 Florida stations used on this site (70%). Estero, 19 miles southeast, has its own station (Fort Myers SW Fl Regional Airport, FL): 53.5 inches a year, 4.0 less than here, and an August average high of 91°F against 92°F.

Water temperature at the NOAA tide station Fort Myers, FL, 16 miles northeast, averaged 88°F in July and August and 67°F in January over 2021–2025. It averaged 80°F or warmer from May to October. Sea level at the Fort Myers tide gauge, 16 miles from St James City, has risen 1.43 ± 0.08 inches per decade from 1965 to 2025, NOAA's linear trend; at that pace it is 14.3 inches in a hundred years. That is faster than at 86 of the 144 U.S. gauges with a NOAA trend.

Since 1996, the National Weather Service has logged 45 flood, rain, thunderstorm wind and lightning events that began within 10 miles of St James City: 34 thunderstorm wind reports, 8 floods, 2 lightning strikes and 1 heavy rain event. They killed 1 person and injured 1, and the NWS estimated $1.3 million in property and crop damage. The strongest thunderstorm gust on record here was 68 mph, on January 9, 2016.

Flood insurance policyholders in St James City's ZIP code 33956 have filed 1,529 claims with the National Flood Insurance Program since 1980, and were paid $74.2 million for buildings and contents, in the dollars of each year. The most came from Hurricane Ian in 2022: 1,053 claims (69% of all) and $59.0 million, then Hurricane Milton in 2024 with 185 and Hurricane Helene in 2024 with 94. 96% of the claims carry the name of a storm or flood event; the rest have no event name. Of the 340 Florida cities on this site with 10 or more claims, 268 have fewer than St James City.