BLUE SPRING · DECEMBER · THE MONTH GUIDE
December is the month the air at Blue Spring finally drops below the water. The run holds near 74.3°F every day of the year, while the December air peaks at a normal 73.1°F. The swim that felt like cold relief in August becomes the warmest thing you do all afternoon.
The date costs you daylight: 10 hours 21 minutes on the 15th, with the sun gone by 5:31 pm. It buys you a boardwalk you can walk at one o’clock without looking for shade. For the park itself, season aside, start at our Blue Spring guide.
THE MONTH AT A GLANCE · BLUE SPRING · DECEMBER
December trades November’s 77.8°F afternoons for 73.1°F ones and the year’s shortest days, then hands you 74.3°F water, 3,050 feet of boardwalk and air cool enough to enjoy both at midday.
DRY SEASON · 73.1°F DAYS · 74.3°F WATER · SUNSET 5:31 PM
Go for: water that ignores the calendar, a 3,050-foot boardwalk that is pleasant at 1 pm in December, and afternoons that end early enough to eat dinner in daylight’s afterglow.
Think twice before: counting on warm mornings. The normal low is 54.5°F, and about one December in three sends a night to 32°F or below.
Air: NOAA NCEI 1991-2020, Orlando Executive AP · Water: USGS gauge 02235500 · Park counts: Florida DEP 2024 inventory · full sources at the end
On this page
- Blue Spring weather in December73.1°F days, 54.5°F nights, 3.4 wet days
- What to wear morning and afternoonThe 18.6-degree swing inside one day
- Crowds, parking and prices in December187 spaces, and what we could not verify
- Things to do at Blue Spring in DecemberBoardwalk, launch, platforms, cabins
- A two-day plan around 10 hours of lightHour by hour to a 5:31 pm sunset
- December vs November and JanuaryHow the three months compare
- Is December a good time to go?Our verdict, and who should shift
Everything below is dated to the month. Where the park sits in a wider Florida winter belongs to our month-by-month state calendar, and what a week of this costs belongs to the trip-cost guide.
Blue Spring weather in December: average highs, lows and rain days
| December at Blue Spring | Normal, 1991-2020 |
|---|---|
| Average high | 73.1°F |
| Average low | 54.5°F |
| Precipitation | 2.28 in |
| Days with 0.10 in or more | 3.4 |
| Days with 1.00 in or more | 0.6 |
| Nights at 32°F or below | 0.3 |
| Daylight on Dec 15 | 10h 21m |
| Spring water | 74.3°F (23.5°C) |
The air figures come from NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information, 1991 to 2020 monthly normals, read off a real thermometer: station USW00012841 at Orlando Executive Airport, about 27 miles from the spring. December’s normal high is 73.1°F, the normal low 54.5°F, the normal precipitation 2.28 inches. Every figure here describes the air above the run. The water keeps its own temperature all year, and a station 27 miles inland cannot tell you what the parking lot did this morning.
That 2.28 inches sounds wetter than it plays out. Measurable rain, meaning at least a tenth of an inch, falls on 3.4 days in an average December, roughly one day in nine. An inch or more arrives 0.6 times, about three Decembers in five. In practice you get a band of rain that moves through and a run that looks exactly the same afterward, because 168 cubic feet of water per second leaves the vent no matter what the sky does.
Pack for two climates in one bag. A fleece for the 8 am walk from the car, a t-shirt for the middle of the day, a towel, and a full change of dry clothes for the way back. Nothing dries fast at this latitude in December once the sun is low, and the air is back in the fifties within an hour of sunset.
On December 15, sunrise-sunset.org puts the sunrise at 7:10 am and the sunset at 5:31 pm local time: 10 hours 21 minutes, near the shortest stretch the year hands out. The useful consequence is that the light starts going long and gold around four, so anything you wanted to photograph on the boardwalk wants to happen before 4:30 pm.
How warm is Blue Spring in December?
A normal December day climbs from 54.5°F to 73.1°F, a swing of 18.6 degrees between dawn and mid-afternoon. The spring sits outside all of that. A U.S. Geological Survey gauge at Blue Spring, station 02235500, read 74.3°F (23.5°C) on September 11, 2026. That is one instantaneous reading rather than an average of daily maxima, and the same gauge reads close to it in every season, which is the point of a first-magnitude spring.
So the clothing plan runs backward from what Florida usually asks. Long sleeves and closed shoes at 8 am, when the air is twenty degrees cooler than the water. Swimsuit and sandals by one, when the air has caught up to within a degree of the run. The cold part of a December swim is never the entry, it is the ninety seconds afterward, standing wet in a breeze.
Freezing nights exist and they are rare: 0.3 nights in an average December fall to 32°F or below, so roughly one December in three carries a single frosty morning. If one lands on your trip, the run steams at dawn and the boardwalk handrail is genuinely cold. An extra layer settles it.
How busy is Blue Spring in December? Crowds, prices and the demand peak
December falls inside Florida’s dry season, November through April, which is when the whole state does its best business. We found no occupancy series and no monthly room-rate table for this corner of the state, so we crown no month the cheapest or the busiest. What the state does count is parking: 187 spaces at Blue Spring State Park. When the lot fills, the gate closes, and that ceiling matters more on a July Saturday than on a Tuesday in December.
That changes the shape of the booking question. For a day visit there is nothing to reserve and everything to do with the clock: arrive in the first couple of hours the gate is open and the 187-space ceiling never enters your day. For a night inside the park the inventory is six cabins, and six of anything goes early in the dry season. We could not verify the reservation window, so we give no number of weeks.
We could not verify the local lodging-tax rate either, so we give no percentage. Read the tax line on the confirmation before you compare two quotes near Orange City, because the advertised nightly rate and the total are different animals in Florida.
One upgrade genuinely changes this month: sleeping in one of the six cabins. You are inside the gate before the parking question is ever asked, you get the boardwalk in the first light of a 7:10 am sunrise, and you are not driving back in the dark at 5:31 pm. We could not verify what a cabin night costs, so treat it as a plan rather than a price.
Things to do in Blue Spring in December
December lets you do the dry things and the wet thing on the same day without choosing. At a 73.1°F high you can walk the full boardwalk at one in the afternoon, paddle the run, and still want to get in the water afterward. In August the same sequence costs you the middle of the day, and the 187-space lot can shut the gate before you have even started.
The Florida Department of Environmental Protection counted the park in its 2024 facilities inventory: 3,050 feet of boardwalk, 3 observation platforms, 1 designated swimming area, 1 launch for canoes, kayaks and tubes, 6 cabins, 187 parking spaces. The vent pushes 168 cubic feet per second, replaced faster than it can cloud, which is why you can count fish from a platform. Call the park before you drive to confirm the entrance fee and opening hour.
The run does not notice the month. The air does, and the gap is the whole story: 54.5°F on the bank at dawn against 74.3°F in the water is a difference of nearly twenty degrees, running the wrong way round for Florida. The practical version is that an early December swim feels warm and the walk back feels cold, while at two in the afternoon the two temperatures are within a degree of each other.
Once you are through the gate, the walking costs nothing extra: three thousand feet of raised deck, three platforms over the water, and as long as you want on any of them. We could not verify what the gate itself charges, so we quote no figure, and a price found at another Florida park does not transfer here.
Blue Spring in December: two-day itinerary
Day one runs on the light. Sunrise is 7:10 am, so be at the lot within the first hour the gate is open, when the 187 spaces are not a question. Walk the boardwalk to the vent first, while the air is still in the fifties and the water looks like it is smoking. Put the boat on the run around eleven. Swim at one, with the air at its 73.1°F peak. Take a platform at four, when the light turns, and leave by the 5:31 pm sunset.
Day two reverses it: paddle early, walk at midday, swim last, then drive out with daylight to spare. If the weather turns, remember what a December wet day usually is, one band of rain rather than a lost afternoon, and the water is 74.3°F through all of it. The single real nuisance is the walk back to the car, so keep the dry clothes in the car and not in a wet bag on the bank.
Blue Spring in December vs November and January
| Normal, 1991-2020 | November | December | January |
|---|---|---|---|
| Average high | 77.8°F | 73.1°F | 71.2°F |
| Average low | 60.1°F | 54.5°F | 51.8°F |
| Precipitation | 1.73 in | 2.28 in | 2.61 in |
| Days with 0.10 in or more | 3.0 | 3.4 | 3.8 |
| Spring water | No seasonal swing | No seasonal swing | No seasonal swing |
November’s afternoons run 4.7 degrees warmer than December’s and its nights 5.6 degrees milder, on 1.73 inches of rain against 2.28. January goes the other way, 1.9 degrees cooler by day and 2.7 cooler at night, with 2.61 inches and 3.8 wet days. All three months share the same 74.3°F water, so the three-month argument is entirely about the air you stand in between swims.
Shift four weeks back to November and you gain a warmer bank and the driest of the three months, while losing the deep quiet that arrives once the school calendar clears. Shift four weeks forward to January and you gain the biggest contrast between cool air and constant water, and you pay for it with 0.33 more inches of rain and the coolest nights of the three.
Is December a good time to visit Blue Spring?
Yes, and without much hedging, for anyone who came for the water and the boardwalk rather than for a beach tan. Swimmers, paddlers and photographers get a 73.1°F afternoon, a spring that does not care what month it is, and a lot that is far less likely to hit its 187-space ceiling than on a summer Saturday. Sun worshippers looking to lie on a bank for six hours will find 54.5°F mornings a poor start.
If that morning chill is the deal breaker, take November: 77.8°F by day, 60.1°F at night, and 1.73 inches of rain, the driest and mildest of the three months on the table. You give up a little of December’s calm and you get a bank you can sit on at nine in the morning.
What December holds on its own is the year’s shortest daylight, 10 hours 21 minutes on the 15th, paired with water that runs a degree warmer than the afternoon air. The day is short, so start it at 7:10 am and waste none of it.
The last word
Decide one thing before you book: a day visit or a cabin. A day visit is won by arriving early against 187 spaces, a cabin night is won by booking against an inventory of six. Everything else about this month is already settled by the ground. Florida law protects what it calls Outstanding Florida Springs under statute 373.802(5), a list that takes in every historic first-magnitude spring plus six named by hand, and the reason that protection exists is the same reason the run sits at 74.3°F on a morning when your car windshield has frost on it.
Sources & data for this guide
- December, November and January air normals (1991-2020) · NOAA NCEI monthly normals, station USW00012841, Orlando Executive AP, about 27 miles from the spring · checked Sep 24, 2026
- Rain-day and freeze-night counts (3.4 days at 0.10 in, 0.6 day at 1.00 in, 0.3 nights at 32°F) · NOAA NCEI, same station and period · checked Sep 24, 2026
- Daylight, sunrise 7:10 am and sunset 5:31 pm on December 15 · sunrise-sunset.org, converted from UTC to local time · checked Sep 24, 2026
- Water temperature 74.3°F (23.5°C) and discharge 168 cubic feet per second · USGS National Water Information System, station 02235500 Blue Spring, instantaneous reading · read Sep 11, 2026
- Park counts: 3,050 ft of boardwalk, 3 observation platforms, 1 swimming area, 1 launch, 6 cabins, 187 parking spaces · Florida Department of Environmental Protection, Recreational Facilities Inventory 2024 · checked Sep 24, 2026
- Outstanding Florida Springs definition · Florida Statutes 373.802(5) · checked Sep 24, 2026
- What we could not verify: floridastateparks.org returned 403 to our automated reads and the FWC manatee page renders client-side, so we carry no entrance fee, no opening hour and no manatee count · checked Sep 24, 2026