Orlando International Took About 31 Minutes of Departure Delays in Sunday Evening's FAA Snapshot — and Monday's Rain Is Still Over the Field
The FAA's Sunday-evening status snapshot put Orlando's departure delays at about 31 minutes on thunderstorms and light rain, with Fort Lauderdale, Miami and Fort Myers caught in the same Florida weather pattern. On Monday the airport sits in light rain at 71 degrees with gusts to 32 mph under the flood watch — a check-your-flight day, stated with the snapshot's date on it.
Florida's weather was the country's flight-delay story heading into Monday, and Orlando International was in the middle of it. In the Federal Aviation Administration's National Airspace System status snapshot taken Sunday evening, November 1, at 7:08 p.m. Eastern, Orlando recorded departure delays of about 31 minutes attributed to thunderstorms and weather, according to a November 2 roundup of the FAA data. Fort Lauderdale showed about the same — roughly 31 minutes of departure delays, with an earlier ground delay program for arrivals — Miami showed about 15 minutes, and Fort Myers operated under thunderstorm-related restrictions. The only comparable pressure point in the country was Las Vegas, under a wind-related ground delay averaging about 49 minutes.
Monday has not cleared the field. Conditions at Orlando International at midday read light rain and 71 degrees, with humidity at 95 percent and an east-northeast wind at 18 miles per hour gusting to 32, under the same Flood Watch that covers the metro until 7 p.m. The airport's hourly picture keeps rain chances high into the early afternoon — 78 percent at 1 p.m. and 72 percent at 2 p.m. Eastern — before easing to cloudy skies by mid-afternoon. That is the kind of pattern that spaces out departures and arrivals even without a formal ground stop, which is how Sunday evening's delays built in the first place.
The honest limits of this file matter: the 31-minute figure is Sunday evening's FAA snapshot, not a live Monday delay board, and no Monday delay average was verified this cycle. What travelers can act on is the combination — a wet, gusty field, a flood watch over the roads to the airport, and an evening of Election Day traffic still to come on Tuesday. The working advice is unchanged and unglamorous: check your flight with your airline before leaving for MCO, build the rain into the drive, and expect the Florida pattern — short weather holds that clear in waves — rather than a single long shutdown.
