Orlando in September: Weather, Crowds, Prices and the Hurricane Peak

ORLANDO · SEPTEMBER · 28.4° N

September is the month Orlando starts coming down off the summer. The NOAA station at Orlando International averages a high of 89.6°F and a low of 72.4°F for the month, two degrees cooler at the top than August, with 6.37 inches of rain falling across it. Underneath those numbers sits the calendar that decides more: American schools are back, and the Atlantic hurricane season reaches its statistical peak on September 10.

What the month gives back is water. The USGS gauge at Wekiwa Springs read 75.6°F on September 11, 2026, about fourteen degrees below a normal Orlando afternoon, and the light holds until 7:31 p.m. in the middle of the month. What it takes away is certainty: book refundable, check the tropics before you fly, and expect no ticket price from us, because Disney and Universal price by date and any figure written today is wrong within weeks.

On this page

• Orlando weather in September89.6°F days, 6.37 inches over 9.2 days
• How hot it gets, day and night72.4°F before dawn, 89.6°F by mid-afternoon
• Crowds, room prices and the lodging tax6% county on top of 6% state
• Things to do in Orlando in SeptemberWekiwa, Kelly Park, Blue Spring
• A two-day plan for SeptemberGates at 7:09 a.m., water at noon
• September vs August and October4.9°F cooler than September in October
• Is September a good time to visit?Yes for two travelers, no for one
• Getting around Orlando without a carLYNX fares and the All-Day Pass rule

Orlando runs on Eastern time, an hour ahead of Pensacola and Destin on the western side of the Panhandle. SunRail, the commuter train through downtown, lists no airport station and no theme-park station on its own schedule page, so without a car the fallback is LYNX, the bus network of Orange, Seminole and Osceola counties. Getting around Florida carries the rest of it. A single LYNX ride is $2.00, the transfer is free, and the $4.50 All-Day Pass has to be requested before the money goes into the farebox.

Orlando weather in September: average highs, lows and rain days

Every figure here comes from NOAA’s 1991-2020 monthly normals for station USW00012815, the thermometer at Orlando International Airport, and not from a gridded reanalysis. A station is an instrument in a known place. A reanalysis averages a cell several miles across and can miss a monthly minimum by three degrees, which is why the source belongs in the sentence and not only in a footnote. September’s normals are an 89.6°F high, a 72.4°F low and 6.37 inches of precipitation.

Measurable rain falls on 9.2 days in a normal September, and 1.8 of those days deliver an inch or more. Divide 6.37 inches by 9.2 wet days and the average wet day comes to roughly two-thirds of an inch, which is a downpour and not a gray drizzle. Planning for two full washouts and about seven shorter interruptions covers an average month, and the National Weather Service puts Orlando inside Florida’s wet season, May through October, where the storms build in the afternoon.

Day to night, the spread is 17.2°F, from an 89.6°F high to a 72.4°F low. There is no case for a jacket at those numbers and a strong one for a rain shell: umbrellas are awkward in a park queue, and two-thirds of an inch of water finds its way past one. Add a second shirt for the afternoon and shoes you can soak and wear again the next morning.

On September 15 the sun rises at 7:09 a.m. and sets at 7:31 p.m. Eastern, for 12 hours 21 minutes of daylight. Sunset keeps moving earlier through the month as the equinox passes, so anything outdoors that needs light, a paddle or a swim, should start well before 6 p.m. in the last week rather than after dinner.

How warm is Orlando in September? 89.6°F days and 72.4°F nights

The 72.4°F low is an overnight figure and the 89.6°F high an afternoon one, with 17.2 degrees between them. The station publishes temperature and precipitation, not humidity, so nothing here converts to a heat index: the number you feel on a wet September afternoon runs above the one in the table, and we give no value for it.

In practice you dress once. Shorts, a shirt that dries, a shell in the bag, and sunscreen applied before the 7:09 a.m. daylight becomes a queue in the open. Nothing in a 72.4°F night calls for layering, and by mid-afternoon the only real relief is shade, water or air conditioning, which is the argument for putting the springs or the pool in the middle of the day.

Freezing nights stay theoretical. A normal low of 72.4°F sits more than forty degrees clear of 32°F, and the monthly normals we read do not break out a count of nights at or below freezing, so we publish none rather than claim there are zero. October’s normal low of 66.2°F keeps the question academic through the next month too.

How busy is Orlando in September? Crowds, prices and the 6% county lodging tax

September falls between the two peaks the calendar does publish: the summer school holidays that end in August, and the March family holidays that fill the Orlando theme parks while college spring break lands on the beach towns instead. We hold no monthly occupancy series and no monthly room-rate series for Orlando, so no ranking of September among the twelve appears here, only the calendar fact that it sits outside both.

We have no booking-window data for the city either, so no number of weeks appears here. Our Florida orientation puts an Orlando trip at four to seven nights, and what September changes about them is the rate you book rather than the date you book it. September 10 is the statistical peak of the Atlantic hurricane season, which runs June 1 to November 30 with most activity between mid-August and mid-October. A refundable room and a changeable flight carry a premium in any month, and this is the month to pay it.

Orange County, where Orlando and the parks sit, levies a 6.0% transient rental tax, filed and paid with the 6% state sales tax. That is 12% on the room before anything a property adds on its own, and it does not move with the season. We verified the Orange County rate only: Osceola and Seminole, the two other counties LYNX serves, set their own and we did not read them. What Florida costs holds the wider tiers.

Paying more changes September in one place, the cancellation terms. An upgraded ticket or a bigger pool buys exactly the same thing in March. A refundable rate buys something only this month needs, sitting as it does on the hurricane peak. Theme-park admission itself stays unquoted here on purpose: both operators price dynamically by date, and the operator’s own site is the only figure worth trusting on the day you book.

Things to do in Orlando in September: Wekiwa Springs, Rock Springs and Blue Spring

Air at 89.6°F over water at 75.6°F is the September combination, and it is a fourteen-degree drop the moment you step in. In January the same spring reads as a warm bath, and the manatees that gather at Blue Spring arrive in winter precisely because the river around them has cooled while the spring has not. In September the manatees are elsewhere and the designated swimming area is the whole point of the drive.

Wekiwa Springs State Park is the closest to the city, and the state’s 2024 facilities inventory counts it exactly: 325 parking spaces, one designated swimming area, one canoe, kayak and tube launch, 15.9 miles of paddling trail, 13.7 miles of hiking trail and 1,435 feet of boardwalk. North of it, Rock Springs at Kelly Park is the tubing run. Blue Spring State Park, at Orange City, counts 187 parking spaces, 3,050 feet of boardwalk, three observation platforms and six cabins. Silver Springs, the glass-bottom-boat park, works at another scale entirely, with 1,686 parking spaces and three launches.

USGS gauges read 75.6°F at Wekiwa, 75.0°F at Rock Springs and 74.3°F at Blue Spring on September 11, 2026, all instantaneous readings on a single day rather than monthly means. Those numbers barely shift across the year. The air above them does, from a 91.6°F August afternoon to an 84.7°F October one, and that gap is the season. The parking counts explain the other September effect: 325 spaces at Wekiwa and 187 at Blue Spring fill on a warm morning, and the gate then turns cars away.

The Florida state parks website answers 403 to our reads, so no entrance fee, no opening hour and no free-admission day appears here for Wekiwa, Kelly Park, Blue Spring or Silver Springs. The one charge-free item we verified sits on the bus rather than at a gate: LYNX transfers cost nothing, on a network where a single ride is $2.00, a discount ride $1.00, and the All-Day Pass runs $4.50 from 4:00 a.m. on the day of issue to 3:00 a.m. the next.

Orlando in September: a two-day itinerary and the best times of day for parks

Day one starts with the 7:09 a.m. sunrise. Take the gate at opening (the operators publish their times by date and move them, so check the week of your trip), spend the first three hours on the outdoor rides and the walking, then move indoors or into water from noon, when the 89.6°F high and the wet-season storms share the same window. Come back out around five and plan on losing the light at 7:31 p.m.

Day two goes to the springs. Wekiwa has 325 parking spaces and one designated swimming area, a ceiling of 325 cars for the whole park, which is why warm mornings end with arrivals turned back. Paddlers get 15.9 miles of trail, walkers 13.7 miles, and a 75.6°F pool at the end of either. If the sky turns, the swap is indoors: 9.2 wet days a month, roughly seven of them short and 1.8 heavy, is the reason to leave the second day unbooked until the night before.

Orlando in September vs August and October

Two degrees separate September’s 89.6°F high from August’s 91.6°F, and 4.9 more separate it from October’s 84.7°F. At night the order holds: 73.7°F, then 72.4°F, then 66.2°F. Rain totals fall in the same sequence, 7.69 inches to 6.37 to 3.46, and wet days with them, 11.5 to 9.2 to 5.3. The spring water stays put through all three, 75.6°F at Wekiwa on one September day, with no monthly series behind it to compare.

Move the trip four weeks later and October takes 4.9°F off the afternoon, 6.2°F off the night and 3.9 wet days off the month, with 3.46 inches of rain against September’s 6.37. The cost is the evening swim, since a 66.2°F low is a genuine change of clothes after sunset, and the hurricane window still covers the first half of the month. Move four weeks the other way and August adds 1.32 inches of rain and 2.3 wet days for two extra degrees of heat.

Is September a good time to visit Orlando?

Yes for a trip built around water and early mornings, and for anyone who can hold a refundable booking and rearrange a day without drama. No for a household that has to lock everything in non-refundable, months out, across the two weeks around September 10. An 89.6°F afternoon and 9.2 wet days are ordinary Florida numbers and the parks run straight through them. What sits on top of the month is a booking question rather than a weather one.

If the answer is no, take October: 84.7°F days, 66.2°F nights, 3.46 inches of rain over 5.3 days, and the same springs at the same temperature, now about nine degrees below the air instead of fourteen. The hurricane season still runs to November 30, so the refundable rate stays sensible, but the statistical peak is behind you and the afternoon storm count drops by nearly half.

In one line: among the three months, September is the only one that puts a fourteen-degree air-to-water gap at the springs together with fewer than ten wet days.

The last word

Book the room refundable, leave the second day open, and let the forecast rather than the itinerary decide which morning goes to Wekiwa. One practical thing not yet said: Orlando has two commercial airports and they are not the same trip. MCO boarded 27,859,783 passengers in 2024, the busiest in Florida and ahead of Miami, while Sanford SFB boarded 1.4 million. We could not verify how far SFB sits from the parks, because the airport’s own site blocks our connection, so price the ground transfer before you take the cheaper fare.

Sources & data for this guide

• September normals: high 89.6°F, low 72.4°F, 6.37 in, 9.2 days at 0.10 in, 1.8 days at 1.00 in · NOAA NCEI monthly normals 1991-2020, station USW00012815, Orlando International Airport · checked Sep 11, 2026
• August and October normals (91.6/73.7/7.69/11.5 and 84.7/66.2/3.46/5.3) · same NOAA NCEI 1991-2020 station series, not estimates · checked Sep 11, 2026
• Daylight 12 h 21 min, sunrise 7:09 a.m. and sunset 7:31 p.m. on September 15, converted from UTC to Eastern · sunrise-sunset.org · checked Sep 11, 2026
• Hurricane season June 1 to November 30, peak September 10, most activity mid-August to mid-October · NOAA National Hurricane Center · checked Sep 11, 2026
• Orange County 6.0% transient rental tax with the 6% state sales tax · Florida Department of Revenue, form DR-15TDT · checked Sep 11, 2026
• LYNX fares, free transfer and the All-Day Pass request rule · LYNX official Fares & Passes page · checked Sep 11, 2026
• SunRail station list, with no airport and no theme-park stop, and no fare printed on its Fares & Passes page · sunrail.com · checked Sep 11, 2026
• Spring water 75.6°F (Wekiwa), 75.0°F (Rock Springs), 74.3°F and 168 cfs (Blue Spring), instantaneous readings on one day · USGS NWIS stations 02234600, 02234610, 02235500 · checked Sep 11, 2026
• Parking spaces, boardwalk lengths, launches and trail mileage · Florida Department of Environmental Protection, Recreational Facilities Inventory, 2024 annual report · checked Sep 11, 2026
• Manatees and winter spring temperature mechanism · Southwest Florida Water Management District, The Hydrology and Water Quality of Select Springs, 2001, revised 2011 · checked Sep 11, 2026
• MCO 27,859,783 and SFB 1.4 million boardings, CY2024 · Federal Aviation Administration · checked Sep 11, 2026
• What we could not verify: theme-park ticket prices (both operators price by date), state-park entrance fees and opening hours (floridastateparks.org answers 403 to our reads), the distance from Sanford SFB to the parks (the airport site blocks our connection), and any monthly occupancy or room-rate series for Orlando · noted Sep 11, 2026