Climate and Storm History of Port Charlotte, Florida

Port Charlotte. Florida is located along the state’s Gulf Coast.  As such, it experiences a humid subtropical climate, but is also somewhat unusual in its climate classification, bordering also on a tropical wet and dry climate.  For Port Charlotte, this means that summers are long, hot and humid and afternoon thunderstorms are frequent, almost a daily occurrence.  On the other hand, the winters are mild to warm with a distinct drop in precipitation.  Throughout the year, the temperature change only varies about 20 degrees Fahrenheit on a twice daily basis.

The type of climate affecting Port Charlotte has a monthly mean temperature above 70 degrees Fahrenheit every month of the year.  With a typically pronounced dry season, the driest month in Port Charlotte is January with precipitation less than 3 inches and also very low annual precipitation.  In essence, a tropical wet and dry climate tends to either see less rainfall than a tropical monsoon climate or have more pronounced dry seasons than a tropical monsoon climate.  In Port Charlotte, like most places that have tropical wet and dry climates, the dry season occurs during the time of lower sun and shorter days because of rainshadow effects during the 'high-sun' part of the year.  This would be from December through February in Port Charlotte.

Port Charlotte was severely impacted by Hurricane Charley on August 13, 2004.  Charley was predicted to hit the Tampa metropolitan area as a category 2 hurricane, but then took a last-minute right turn to head more directly east.  Charley intensified into a category 4 hurricane as it made landfall near Charlotte Harbor and caused severe damage in the city of Punta Gorda and in the Port Charlotte area.  The storm’s 145 mph maximum sustained winds destroyed almost half of the homes in the county and took a heavy ecological toll with damage to sensitive wetlands in the area.

City of Port Charlotte, Florida: General Information

The city of Port Charlotte, Florida is a census-designated place, or CDP for U.S. Census purposes.  It is located in Charlotte County along Florida‘s Gulf Coast, and is part of the Punta Gorda Metropolitan Statistical Area.  As of the U.S. Census conducted in 2000, there were 46,451 residents dwelling in Port Charlotte’s 20,453 households, and there were 13,601 families residing in the city.  As such, the population density was 2,085 people per square mile, with a average housing density of  23,315 or 1,047 per square mile.

Port Charlotte’s 20,453 households include 20.8% that had children under the age of 18 living in them, while 53.2% were married couples living together.  Female householders were in 10.1% or Port Charlotte homes and 33.5% were non-families.  Individuals living alone were the heads of household in 28.2% of all households, and 18.6% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older.  On average, the household size was 2.25 residents, and the average family size was 2.71 people

In Port Charlotte. the population was widely distribu8ted, with 18.7% of residents being under the age of 18 and 5.4% were aged from 18 to 24.  The age range of 25 to 44 was 21.0% of the population, and 24.2% were from 45 to 64years old.  Finally, 30.7% of Port Charlotte residents were 65 years of age or older with a city-wide median age of 49 years.  For every 100 females calling Port Charlotte home there were 87.7 males, and women age 18 and over, there were 84.2 males.

The median income for a typical Port Charlotte household was $33,193, and the median income for a family was $38,406.  Males out earned females with a median income of $29,019 versus women‘s $21,892, and the per capita income for Port Charlotte was $18,563.  In all, about 7.3% of families and 10.1% of the population were below the poverty line.  Charlotte County, which includes Port Charlotte, had the region’s highest unemployment rate at 5.8 percent in August 2007, higher than both the national and state averages.

History of the City of Port Charlotte, Florida

Port Charlotte, Florida is a census-designated place, or CDP for U.S. Census purposes.  It is located in Charlotte County, and part of the Punta Gorda Metropolitan Statistical Area.  The first tribe to make their home in the Port Charlotte area were the nomadic paleo-Indians.  The name derives from the tribal subsistence, as they survived by chasing big game such as woolly mammoth southward during the last ice age around 10,000 BC.

At the time, Port Charlotte and its surrounding regions were not coastal areas, as the peninsula of Florida was much wider than it is today and much drier.  As the ice caps melted over thousands of years, the sea level rose and Florida assumed the shape it has today.  The paleo-Indians gave way to the Calusa, who thrived on the southwest Florida coast and numbered over 50,000 in population when the first Spaniards reached the peninsula in the 1500s.  Their arrival devastated the Calusa, as Euroean diseases such as small pox and measles decimated the population.  Later, the Seminole tribe would arrive as they were forced from the north and establish themselves on the peninsula.

In 1819, Florida was ceded by the Spanish, becoming a U.S. state in 1845.  For the first 100 years of statehood, Port Charlotte remained mostly undeveloped.  Most of the roads and railroads at the turn of the 20th century show that most which lead into southwest Florida bypassed the Port Charlotte area.  Aside from a few cattle raches and small scale agricultural holdings, the area was mostly uninhabited. This changed after World War II, when people first began to notice the abundant opportunities and pleasant climate for developing land in Florida.  By the 1950s, the now defunct land developer began building on both of Florida's coastlines.  Among the areas they planned and developed was the Port Charlotte area. Ultimately, Port Charlotte would become the most populated center of population in Charlotte County, although like most GDC developments, Port Charlotte remained unincorporated land.