Excessively hot waters off the coast of South Florida rose to an unfathomable level Monday evening.
A buoy in Manatee Bay, about 40 miles south of Miami, posted a temperature of 101.1 degrees at 6 p.m. after a morning low of 91 degrees. Temperatures remained at or above 100 from 5 p.m. through late evening.
For comparison, the “ideal” temperature of a hot tub is 100 to 102 degrees, according to jacuzzi.com.
The Manatee Bay reading could be unprecedented globally, although there are no official records maintained for ocean temperatures. A study published in 2020 proposed that the highest sea surface temperature reliably observed may have been 99.7 degrees in the middle of Kuwait Bay, wrote Jeff Masters, a meteorologist and writer for Yale Climate Connections, in a thread on Twitter.
The temperature at Manatee Bay was measured at shallow levels about five feet below the surface — where waters can easily heat up. Masters tweeted that it’s not clear if the temperature is valid because of “contamination of the measurement by land effects and organic matter in the water.”
However, the Manatee Bay buoy temperature reading was among several extreme values in South Florida’s offshore waters.
To the southwest, a buoy near Johnson Key topped out at 98.4 degrees. The temperature hovered at or above 98 degrees for several hours during the evening.
A majority of buoys in the area reached or surpassed 95 degrees during the day. In fact, the average of the two dozen observation locations in and around Florida Bay was right around 96 degrees during the early evening.
The water temperatures were remarkable for being even higher than air temperature
