72 Degrees, All Year: The Spring Itself
A second-magnitude spring pushing more than 40 million gallons a day into its run at a constant 72 degrees — cold in August, warm in January, and indifferent to both. The natural fact under the whole community.
1 minute read
Everything in Wekiwa Springs — the name, the park, the subdivisions, this hub — is downstream of one number: 72. The spring at the heart of Wekiwa Springs State Park holds 72 degrees Fahrenheit every day of the year, because its water rises from the Floridan aquifer at the earth’s own temperature, untouched by the weather above it.
A second-magnitude spring
Hydrologists rank springs by flow, and Wekiwa is a second-magnitude spring: it discharges on the order of 42 to 43 million gallons a day, enough to fill its grass-banked swimming bowl continuously and send a clear run flowing northeast to form the headwaters of the Wekiva River. The vent drops into a small underwater cavern some 15 to 20 feet down — scuba and cave diving are strictly prohibited — and the swimming stays in the designated spring area, not in the runs or the river.
Cold in summer, warm in winter
The 72-degree constancy produces the spring’s famous double character: bracingly cold against a 95-degree August afternoon, and steaming faintly, almost warm, on a January morning when the air is in the forties. Generations of Seminole and Orange County children have learned to swim in that water, and the community beside the park treats it the way coastal towns treat the beach — as the standing fact of local life. The state now manages the crowd it draws; see this hub’s piece on reservations before you go.
Photo: The spring bowl at Wekiwa Springs State Park, early and empty. Photo: Ebyabe, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
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