FLORIDA · SILVER SPRINGS · DECEMBER
A December afternoon here averages 72.4°F, and the dawn in front of it averages 52.0°F. On the 15th the sun is up for ten hours and twenty minutes, the year’s shortest stretch of light, and the summer traffic that tests the park’s lot has gone home. What stays the same is the water: the run under the boardwalk is as clear in December as it is in July, because clarity here is a matter of volume rather than of season.
The month takes the end of the afternoon away. Sunset falls at 5:33 pm, so a 3 pm arrival buys roughly two and a half hours of usable light. And whatever you drove up for, it is not a swim: Florida’s own facilities inventory records no designated swimming area at Silver Springs State Park. Winter swimming with manatees happens elsewhere in the state, and our manatee guide names the places for it.
THE MONTH AT A GLANCE · SILVER SPRINGS · DECEMBER
Come for 72.4°F afternoons, a parking lot that does not fill and water that stays clear, and plan around a 5:33 pm sunset and a park with no designated swimming area.
AVG HIGH 72.4°F · AVG LOW 52.0°F · 3.6 WET DAYS · 10 H 20 MIN OF DAYLIGHT
Go for: 4,775 feet of boardwalk walked in shirtsleeves at midday, 6.3 miles of paddling trail, and a lot big enough that a winter Saturday never tests it.
Think twice before: booking the holiday fortnight late, since the park’s entire lodging stock is ten cabins, or planning a swim, since the state inventory lists no designated swimming area.
Air normals: NOAA NCEI 1991-2020 · Discharge: USGS station 02239500 · Facilities: Florida DEP 2024 inventory
On this page
- Silver Springs weather in December72.4°F highs, 2.17 inches, 3.6 wet days
- How cold do December nights get?52.0°F lows and 0.4 freezing nights
- Crowds, cabins and booking in DecemberThe holiday fortnight and ten cabins
- Things to do in Silver Springs in DecemberBoardwalk, paddling trail, observation platforms
- A two-day plan around a 5:33 pm sunsetThe December itinerary, hour by hour
- December, November or January?How the three months compare
- Is December a good time to visit?Who should come and who should wait
Two kinds of numbers run through the sections below, and they are not the same kind. The air figures are measured climate normals. The spring answers to none of them: its water has no season, and no verified temperature reading for it reached us, so no water temperature appears anywhere here. For everything that is not dated by the month, from the park itself to the wider calendar, see the Silver Springs guide and Florida month by month.
Silver Springs weather in December: average highs, lows and rain days
| December measure | Value |
|---|---|
| Average high | 72.4°F |
| Average low | 52.0°F |
| Precipitation | 2.17 in |
| Days with 0.10 in or more | 3.6 |
| Days with 1 in or more | 0.3 |
| Nights at 32°F or below | 0.4 |
| Daylight on Dec 15 | 10 h 20 min |
The 1991-2020 normals come from NOAA NCEI: an average high of 72.4°F, an average low of 52.0°F and 2.17 inches of precipitation over the month. The instrument behind them is a real thermometer at Leesburg Municipal Airport, station USW00012819, not a modeled grid cell. It also sits about 27 miles (44 km) from the vent, so read these as the shape of a December in this part of central Florida rather than a reading taken at the water’s edge.
An average December records measurable rain on 3.6 days, roughly one day in eight. The soaking kind, an inch or more in a single day, turns up 0.3 times per December, so about one year in three gets one. That is the useful translation of the 2.17-inch total: it arrives thin and often as an hour of drizzle, and the odds of losing a whole two-day trip to weather are small.
The gap between the average low and the average high is 20.4°F, and you feel all of it in a single day. Sunrise on the 15th is at 7:13 am, when the air is still in the low fifties, and the same afternoon runs to the low seventies. Pack for both ends: a fleece or light jacket for the first two hours, short sleeves for the middle of the day, and a dry layer in the car if a paddle is on the plan.
Daylight is the real constraint. Ten hours and twenty minutes on December 15, from a 7:13 am sunrise to a 5:33 pm sunset, means the day closes while it is still warm. Boardwalk light goes flat well before the sun is down, so start the last loop by half past four and treat any 3 pm arrival as a half day rather than an afternoon.
How warm is Silver Springs in December? Highs near 72°F, nights near 52°F
December runs 72.4°F by day and 52.0°F at night, a spread of 20.4°F. That swing is not a December quirk: November’s is 20.2°F and January’s 21.0°F, so every winter month here asks for the same two wardrobes. What separates the three is the level, not the range, and December sits neatly between its neighbors.
In practice, the morning on the boardwalk is a jacket-and-hands-in-pockets affair, and by one o’clock the jacket is tied around your waist. Cold water plus 52°F air makes a wet launch at nine genuinely unpleasant, so shift anything involving a boat toward the warm middle hours and keep the hat: the sun is low all month and the shaded stretches under the canopy stay several degrees behind the open bank.
Frost is rare and not impossible. The normals count 0.4 nights at or below 32°F in an average December, which works out to two freezing nights across five Decembers. Tent campers should carry for it. Nobody has given us a verified water temperature for the spring itself, so we quote none, and the one figure that does describe the water is a flow rate rather than a thermometer.
How busy is Silver Springs in December? Crowds, cabins and booking
December splits in two. The first three weeks are ordinary dry-season weeks; the last fortnight is a national school holiday, and everything in Florida feels it. Past that calendar fact we rank nothing: we found no occupancy series and no monthly room-rate series for the area, so we crown no month cheap and no month expensive. The capacity figure the state does publish is 1,686 parking spaces, and when that lot fills the gate closes. It is a summer Saturday problem, not a December one.
Lodging inside the park is ten cabins. Ten is the entire inventory, so a stay over the holiday fortnight is a months-ahead reservation rather than a weekend decision, while a Tuesday night on December 9 is a different exercise altogether. If the cabins are gone, our Florida lodging guide covers the rest of the state’s winter patterns, and Ocala’s motel strip absorbs most of the overflow.
On money, we would rather say less than guess. We could not verify the lodging-tax rate that applies here, so we give no percentage. We also could not verify the park’s entrance fee or its opening hour: floridastateparks.org returned a 403 to our automated reads on September 11, 2026, and a fee copied from another Florida park does not transfer, because fees vary by park and by season. Budget for a gate charge and confirm the number with the park before you drive up.
There is one upgrade that genuinely changes a December trip, and it is the cabin. On a day with ten hours and twenty minutes of light, sleeping inside the gate hands back the first hour of it, the hour when the air is at 52°F and the boardwalk belongs to whoever got there. Everything else you can spend more on moves the trip’s comfort; only that one moves the clock.
Things to do in Silver Springs in December: the boardwalk, the paddling trail and the cabins
December is the month when the long walk is simply a walk. Covering 4,775 feet of boardwalk in 72.4°F air with the humidity down is a different physical act from doing it in August, and it is the one thing the summer version of this park cannot offer at any price. The other December gift is space: the lot that decides a July Saturday is not being asked a question in the third week of December.
Florida DEP’s 2024 facilities inventory counts what is actually here: 4,775 feet of boardwalk, 6.3 miles of paddling trail, five observation platforms, ten cabins and three canoe, kayak and tube launches. The same inventory records no designated swimming area. One caution on the launches: our two readings of that document disagree on whether the launches are listed at all, so call the park before you build a day around putting a boat in.
The air changes, the spring does not, and the size of that gap is what makes the season. A USGS gauge at station 02239500 read 264 cubic feet per second leaving the vent in September 2026, and that volume is the reason the water stays clear: it is replaced faster than it can cloud. So a December paddle starts in 52°F air over a run that looks exactly as it looked in August, which is a sensation no summer visit can produce.
Worth knowing what you are looking at: Florida law places this spring in a named class, the Outstanding Florida Springs defined by Florida Statutes 373.802(5), which covers every historic first-magnitude spring the Florida Geological Survey recognizes. The designation costs a visitor nothing and grants nothing, but it tells you the scale of the water under the hull. What is included at the gate and what is extra, we could not confirm.
Silver Springs in December: a two-day itinerary
Day one starts at the gate for opening (confirm the hour the day before, since we could not verify it). Walk the boardwalk from about 8 to 10, while the air climbs out of the low fifties and the light is still sideways. Take the middle of the day on the water, between 11 and 3, when the air is nearest 72.4°F. Be on an observation platform by 4:30 for the last of the light, and be off the trail before the 5:33 pm sunset. Dinner happens in Ocala.
Day two goes long on the water: the 6.3-mile paddling trail fills the warm hours neatly, and the cabins make an early start realistic. If one of December’s 3.6 wet days lands on you, remember the odds that it delivers an inch or more are 0.3 days per month, so wait it out over a late breakfast rather than cancel. If it settles in, swap the second day for a drive and let our statewide list pick the indoor hours.
Silver Springs in December vs November and January
| Measure | November | December | January |
|---|---|---|---|
| Average high | 77.3°F | 72.4°F | 69.9°F |
| Average low | 57.1°F | 52.0°F | 48.9°F |
| Precipitation | 1.76 in | 2.17 in | 2.51 in |
| Days with 0.10 in or more | 2.5 | 3.6 | 3.9 |
| Spring water | no verified reading | no verified reading | no verified reading |
The three months line up as a slide, not a cliff. Afternoons fall from 77.3°F in November to 72.4°F in December and 69.9°F in January, and nights from 57.1°F to 52.0°F to 48.9°F. Rain moves the opposite way: 1.76 inches and 2.5 wet days in November, 2.17 inches and 3.6 in December, 2.51 inches and 3.9 in January. Since no verified water temperature exists for any of the three, the comparison stops at the air, and the air is the only thing the season is changing.
Shifting four weeks earlier buys 4.9°F of afternoon and about one fewer wet day, at the cost of November’s own holiday week and a warmer, busier state around you. Shifting four weeks later costs 2.5°F by day, 3.1°F at night and a third of an inch more rain, and it returns the quietest weeks of the winter once the schools go back. Both cases are priced out in November and January.
Is December a good time to visit Silver Springs?
For walkers, paddlers and anyone who wants the park without the July lot, yes, and by a clear margin: 72.4°F at midday is the comfortable end of the year for covering ground outdoors. For a family expecting a swim, no, and not because of the month. The state inventory lists no designated swimming area here in any season, so December is not what is standing between you and the water.
If the cold mornings are the sticking point, November is the month to book instead: 77.3°F afternoons, 57.1°F nights and 2.5 wet days rather than 3.6, with longer light at the end of the day. The trade is a busier park and a warmer walk. If it is the crowd you want gone, hold for January and accept 69.9°F days and 3.9 wet days as the price.
What December alone puts on the table is the contrast: the full 4,775 feet of boardwalk walked at midday in low-seventies air, over water running at a volume that keeps it clear, with 1,686 parking spaces and no reason for the gate to close behind you.
The last word
Book the two days around the sunset rather than the sunrise, and December works: paddle at eleven, last platform at half past four, gone by 5:33 pm. One more thing about the water you will be sitting on. The statute that defines an Outstanding Florida Spring does not stop at the first-magnitude list drawn up by the Florida Geological Survey. It names six more springs by hand, written into the law one by one, which is how seriously this state takes the thing you came to look at.
Sources & data for this guide
- December normals, rain days and freezing nights · NOAA NCEI monthly normals 1991-2020, station USW00012819, Leesburg Muni AP, FL US · checked Sep 24, 2026
- November and January normals · same NOAA NCEI series, same 1991-2020 period · checked Sep 24, 2026
- Daylight, sunrise 7:13 am and sunset 5:33 pm on Dec 15 (12:13 and 22:33 UTC, converted to Eastern Time) · sunrise-sunset.org · checked Sep 24, 2026
- Discharge of 264 cubic feet per second at the vent · USGS National Water Information System, station 02239500 Silver Springs, instantaneous reading · checked Sep 24, 2026
- Boardwalk, paddling trail, launches, cabins, observation platforms, 1,686 parking spaces and the absence of a designated swimming area · Florida DEP Recreational Facilities Inventory, 2024 annual report · checked Sep 24, 2026
- Outstanding Florida Springs, including the six named in the text of the law · Florida Statutes 373.802(5) · checked Sep 24, 2026
- What we could not verify: the entrance fee, the opening hour, any manatee count and the lodging-tax rate. floridastateparks.org returned 403 to automated reads on Sep 11, 2026, and the FWC manatee page renders client-side. Our two readings of the state inventory also disagree on the launch count, so confirm with the park before planning a paddle.