St. Augustine in February: Weather, Sea Temperature, Crowds and the Two Forts

ST. AUGUSTINE · FEBRUARY · THE MONTH GUIDE

February is the month St. Augustine stops sweating. Days average 68.9°F, nights fall to 46.1°F, and the whole month sits well clear of the Atlantic hurricane season (June 1 to November 30). That means a fleece at breakfast, shirtsleeves by eleven, and a roofless Spanish gundeck you can cross at noon without hunting for shade.

What the month takes away is the water. The Atlantic off the city averages 63.8°F, and the light is short: 11 hours 11 minutes on the 15th, with the sun gone by 6:14 p.m. Eastern. Rain totals 2.86 inches across 4.8 measurable days, the lightest of the three winter months. Everything below is dated to February, and the town itself lives in our St. Augustine guide.

On this page

• St. Augustine weather in FebruaryHighs of 68.9°F, lows of 46.1°F, 4.8 wet days
• Can you swim in February?The sea at 63.8°F, and the flag system
• Crowds, prices and the lodging taxA 5.0% county tax, and what we could not price
• Things to do in St. Augustine in FebruaryCastillo de San Marcos, Fort Matanzas, the lighthouse
• A two-day plan for a February weekendFrom a 7:03 a.m. sunrise to a 6:14 p.m. sunset
• February, January or March?How the three months compare, degree by degree
• Is February a good time to visit?Yes for walkers, no for swimmers
• The month beforeSt. Augustine in January

One structural fact shapes any February itinerary here. St. Augustine holds two of Florida’s eleven National Park Service units, Castillo de San Marcos and Fort Matanzas. Neither carries the National Park title, which in Florida belongs only to Biscayne, Dry Tortugas and Everglades. That matters for planning: each fort is a half day inside a town you are already walking, not a full day with a long drive at either end.

St. Augustine weather in February: average highs, lows and rain days

Every figure here comes from a real thermometer: NOAA’s 1991-2020 monthly normals for station USW00013889, at Jacksonville International Airport, the nearest official record to St. Augustine. It sits inland and a little north of the city, not out on the dunes, so read it as the region’s number rather than the seafront’s. February normals run to a high of 68.9°F, a low of 46.1°F and 2.86 inches of precipitation. That is a station record, not a grid reanalysis, and the difference shows up mostly on overnight lows.

Rain falls on 4.8 days in an average February, counting every day that records at least 0.10 inch. Call it measurable rain roughly one day in six. A full inch arrives on 0.8 day, so a genuine soaking turns up in about four Februaries out of five. For a three or four-night trip that math means one wet stretch rather than a wet week, and 2.86 inches spread over 28 days rarely cancels a morning at the fort.

The spread inside a single day is close to 23 degrees, 68.9°F at the top and 46.1°F at the bottom, and the station logs 2.7 nights at or below freezing. Pack both ends of that: a proper jacket and something for the hands at breakfast, a shirt for the two o’clock walk, a windproof layer for the open top of the Castillo where the river moves the air all afternoon. A rain shell is worth the suitcase space. An umbrella on the gundeck is not.

February 15 gives 11 hours 11 minutes of daylight, sun up at 7:03 a.m. and down at 6:14 p.m. Eastern. The city lies east of the Apalachicola River, so it keeps Eastern time along with Orlando, Tampa and Miami. That sunset governs the day more than the thermometer does: the Castillo takes its last admission at 5:00 p.m. and empties the fort at 5:15, and the lighthouse sells its last ticket at 5:30 p.m. through February 28.

Can you swim in St. Augustine in February? Sea temperature and what it feels like

The water off St. Augustine averages 63.8°F in February in the Open-Meteo Marine record, measured as the mean of daily maxima over 2015-2024. That qualifier does real work: it averages the warmest reading of each day, so it runs a shade above a true 24-hour mean, and tables built on daily averages will publish a slightly cooler number for the same stretch of coast. Take 63.8°F as the friendly end of the range rather than the middle of it.

In practice that is wetsuit water. Surfers are out here all winter in rubber, plenty of visitors will wade in, splash and come back out with a photograph, but a long unsuited swim is not on the menu and children last about as long as their nerve holds. February gains 1.2 degrees on January’s 62.6°F and gives up 3.8 to March’s 67.6°F. No beach week survives those numbers. A morning of sand, shells and walking does, and a dip becomes a dare.

Wind and swell are the gap in our file: we found no verified February wind or wave series for this coast, so we publish no numbers for either. The flag system is verified. Double red means the water is closed, red means high hazard, yellow medium, green low hazard, and purple flies alongside another flag for dangerous marine life. No Florida law obliges a beach to fly any of them. Access has its own rule too: wet sand below the mean high-water line is public, dry sand above it can be private (Florida Statutes s. 163.035).

How busy is St. Augustine in February? Crowds, prices and the lodging tax

February falls inside Florida’s dry season, November through April, the stretch the whole state sells hardest. Where the month lands on price is a question we cannot answer with data: we found no occupancy series and no room-rate series for St. Johns County, so we crown no month cheap and no month expensive. The calendar is plainer. The hurricane season runs June 1 to November 30, February is nowhere near it, and storm-risk cover has nothing to price this month.

Booking windows are the same blank. We verified no hotel, no nightly rate and no demand curve for this city, so a confident “reserve eleven weeks out” would be invention. Two fixed things help instead. The Castillo’s $15 adult ticket is good for seven consecutive days, so a flight that lands after 5:00 p.m. costs you nothing at the gate, and Fort Matanzas costs nothing at all. For lodging shape and budget tiers, see where to stay in Florida and our Florida trip cost guide.

The tax is verified, and it belongs in any comparison of listings. St. Johns County levies a 5.0% transient rental tax on short stays, filed and paid alongside Florida’s 6% state sales tax, so 11% sits on top of the nightly rate before a property adds anything of its own. Resort fees, parking charges and cleaning lines vary by property and we read none of them, so treat that 11% as the floor of the surcharge rather than the whole of it.

The one place extra money genuinely changes February is daylight. A cheap seat into Orlando MCO, the state’s busiest field at 27,859,783 boardings in 2024, buys a drive north and an afternoon spent on I-95. Jacksonville JAX, a medium hub at 3,749,791 boardings, puts you in the old town with the fort still open. With last admission at 5:00 p.m. and sunset at 6:14, your arrival flight is a sightseeing decision. Our flights guide and getting-around guide take it from there.

Things to do in St. Augustine in February: Castillo de San Marcos, Fort Matanzas and the lighthouse

February hands you a full day outdoors in a town built of stone that stores heat. The Castillo’s gundeck is roofless, the lighthouse tower of 1874 is a climb under your own power, and both are a pleasure at 68.9°F in a way neither is in August. The month also sits clear of the Atlantic hurricane season, June 1 to November 30, so a February weekend carries no storm watch and no last-minute rebooking clause hanging over the deposit.

Castillo de San Marcos, the oldest masonry fortification in the continental United States in the Park Service’s own wording, charges $15 for adults aged 16 and over, valid seven consecutive days, with under-16s admitted free when an adult comes along. First admission is 9:00 a.m., last admission 5:00 p.m., everyone out by 5:15, seven days a week apart from Thanksgiving and Christmas. Downriver, Fort Matanzas preserves a coquina watchtower completed in 1742 and charges nothing. The lighthouse runs 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. through February 28, last ticket at 5:30 p.m.

Both forts are built of coquina, the shell rock the Spanish used because it was the only local stone, and those walls look the same in July. February changes the visitor, not the fort: 68.9°F air lets you cross an open gundeck at midday and climb the tower without arriving at the top soaked. Two cautions on the numbers. Those 2.7 freezing nights belong to the airport thermometer inland, not to the seafront. And on March 1 the lighthouse pushes its closing to 6:30 p.m., so February is the short-evening version.

Free in February, and free in every other month: all areas of Fort Matanzas National Monument, the ferry to the fort included. The catch is the boarding pass. It costs nothing, it is issued at the Fort Matanzas Visitor Center rather than the city visitor center downtown, and every member of a family needs one regardless of age. Children 15 and under walk into the Castillo free with an adult. Wet sand below the high-water line, here as everywhere in Florida, is public.

St. Augustine in February: a two-day itinerary

Day one belongs to the Castillo. Sunrise is 7:03 a.m. in mid-February, which gives a cold, quiet hour in the old town before the gate opens at 9:00. Give the gundeck and the ramparts two hours while the air climbs toward its 68.9°F afternoon, eat in the middle of the day, and hold the back half for the lighthouse: last ticket 5:30 p.m. through February 28, and anyone over 44 inches climbs the tower under their own steam. Sunset at 6:14 p.m. turns dinner into a dark-street walk.

Day two runs south to Fort Matanzas, and the first stop is the visitor center for the boarding passes. The ferry is free, and its daily departure times were not published anywhere we could read them, so keep the morning loose and ask on arrival. The name carries an event: Matanzas is Spanish for slaughters, after the killing of French Huguenots at this inlet, and whoever held Florida held the shipping lanes out of the Spanish Caribbean. If one of February’s 4.8 wet days lands on you, that seven-day Castillo ticket is your indoor reserve.

St. Augustine in February vs January and March

Across the three winter months, February is the dry one. It takes 2.86 inches of precipitation against January’s 3.28 and March’s 3.29, on 4.8 days at 0.10 inch or more against 5.2 and 5.6. Temperature runs the other way: 68.9°F days here, 65.5°F in January, 74.3°F in March, with nights at 46.1, 42.9 and 50.6. The sea trails the air, 62.6°F in January, 63.8 in February, 67.6 in March, all on the same daily-maxima basis.

Shift four weeks forward and March pays out 5.4 degrees on the daytime high and 3.8 in the water, in exchange for 0.43 inch more rain and nearly one more wet day. Shift four weeks back and January hands over 3.4 degrees of daytime warmth and 1.2 in the sea, with the same fort ticket and the same free ferry; our January page makes that case in full. For most trips those four weeks buy water temperature, and very little else moves.

Is February a good time to visit St. Augustine?

Yes, if your February looks like walking. You get a stone town at 68.9°F, 11 hours of light, two National Park Service sites within half an hour of each other, fewer wet days than the months on either side, and no hurricane season in sight. No, if the trip you pictured involves swimming. At 63.8°F the Atlantic belongs to surfers in rubber and to brief acts of courage, and nothing about a sunny week warms it up.

If the water is the whole point, wait past March rather than gamble on it: 67.6°F is warmer and still not warm. Our Florida best-time guide sets the dry season, November through April, against the summer heat and the storm calendar. The Castillo holds the same $15 price and the same hours all year, Thanksgiving and Christmas aside, so waiting costs you nothing at the gate.

What February holds alone in this stretch of winter is dryness: 2.86 inches and 4.8 wet days, the lowest of the three, in a town whose two headline attractions have no roof on them.

The last word

Fix the arrival and the rest of the weekend sorts itself: land in daylight, buy the $15 Castillo ticket on day one so its seven days cover a wet morning later, and collect the Fort Matanzas passes at the fort’s own visitor center rather than downtown. One admission we owe you before you go. The Park Service dates the founding of St. Augustine to 1565, and the familiar line about the oldest continuously occupied city in the United States appears on none of the NPS pages we read, so we do not serve it as fact. The date does the job.

Sources & data for this guide

• February normals, rain days and freezing nights · NOAA NCEI monthly normals 1991-2020, station USW00013889, Jacksonville International Airport · checked Sep 23, 2026
• January and March normals, same station and same 1991-2020 period · NOAA NCEI · checked Sep 23, 2026
• Sea surface 63.8°F, mean of daily maxima 2015-2024 · Open-Meteo Marine API · checked Sep 23, 2026
• Daylight, sunrise 7:03 a.m. and sunset 6:14 p.m. Eastern on Feb 15 · sunrise-sunset.org, converted from UTC · checked Sep 23, 2026
• Hurricane season dates and September 10 peak · NOAA National Hurricane Center · checked Sep 23, 2026
• Castillo de San Marcos fees, hours, coquina and the continental-United-States wording · National Park Service · checked Sep 7 and 8, 2026
• Fort Matanzas free entry, boarding passes, 1742 watchtower and the meaning of Matanzas · National Park Service · checked Sep 23, 2026
• Lodging tax, 5.0% St. Johns County transient rental tax with the 6% state sales tax · Florida Department of Revenue, form DR-15TDT · checked Sep 23, 2026
• Lighthouse hours and the 44-inch tower rule · St. Augustine Lighthouse & Maritime Museum · checked Sep 23, 2026 · we could not read a general admission price, so none appears
• Beach warning flags and beach access above the mean high-water line · Florida Statutes s. 380.276 and s. 163.035 · checked Sep 23, 2026
• JAX and MCO 2024 boardings · Federal Aviation Administration, CY2024 · checked Sep 23, 2026
• Editorial admission: we found no occupancy or room-rate series for St. Johns County, no verified February wind or wave data, and no hotel or restaurant we could name with confidence · hours and fees change, check the operators when you book

To plan your stay

• Things to Do in St. Augustine: Castillo Tickets, Fort Matanzas Ferry and Lighthouse Hours
• Where to Stay in St. Augustine: Historic District, the Beach and the 5% Lodging Tax
• Airport to St. Augustine: JAX, MCO, Rental Cars and Eastern Time
• St. Augustine Know Before You Go: Castillo Fees, the Fort Matanzas Ferry Pass and Beach Rules

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• Blue Spring, Florida: Water Temperature, Swimming and Parking Limits