Key West in February: Weather, Sea Temperature, Rain Days and Crowds

FLORIDA KEYS · KEY WEST · FEBRUARY

The number that sets the month is 77.4°F, the average daily high at the airport thermometer, with nights settling back to 67.1°F. Rain adds up to 1.54 inches spread over roughly two and a half wet days, the sun is up for 11 hours and 23 minutes on the 15th, and the Atlantic hurricane season (June 1 to November 30) is nowhere on the calendar. Key West spends February doing what it does best in winter: shorts by day, one layer after dark, and a crowd gathering on the dock at Mallory Square well before the sun gets there.

What the date takes back is water temperature. The sea off the island averages 76.3°F in February, the coolest reading of the January-to-March run, and the month sits inside Florida’s dry season, November through April, the state’s busy winter stretch. If your trip hinges on warm water, read the March column before you book. If it hinges on dry, walkable days and a boat that sails, February is the better bet of the three.

On this page

• Average highs, lows and rain days in February77.4°F days, 2.4 wet days
• Sea temperature for swimming76.3°F, and what that feels like
• Crowds, parking rates and the lodging taxDry season, 11% tax, $3.00 meters
• Things to do in Key West in FebruaryFort Zachary Taylor, Hemingway Home, Dry Tortugas
• A two-day plan around the 6:22 p.m. sunsetTwo days, hour by hour
• February compared with January and MarchHow the three months compare
• Is February a good time to go?Who should come, who should shift

The island off the calendar lives elsewhere: neighborhoods and nights on the Key West guide, the crossing on Dry Tortugas, the twelve-month picture in the best time to visit Florida, and the tolls and rental rules in getting around. Everything here is dated to February.

Key West weather in February: average highs, lows and rain days

Every figure here comes from one thermometer: NOAA NCEI’s 1991-2020 monthly normals for station USW00012836, at Key West International Airport. February averages a high of 77.4°F (25.2°C) and a low of 67.1°F (19.5°C), with 1.54 inches of rain across the month. That is a station record rather than a modeled grid cell, and on overnight lows the two kinds of number do not always agree, which is why we name the station instead of the model.

Measurable rain falls on 2.4 days in an average February, about one day in twelve, and only 0.4 of a day brings an inch or more, so a real soaking arrives roughly two Februaries in five. In practice that reads as a shower passing over lunch rather than a washed-out afternoon. Plan the day as though it will hold, and keep one indoor hour in your back pocket for the one time it does not.

The gap between high and low is 10.3 degrees, and all of it arrives after dark with a breeze coming off the water. Days run in shorts. Evenings on a dock, a boat deck or an open-air table want long sleeves, and anyone facing an early ferry check-in should put that layer in the day bag rather than leave it in the room. Nothing about February calls for a coat. A light sweater and a windbreaker cover the whole trip.

On February 15 the sun rises at 6:59 a.m. and sets at 6:22 p.m. Eastern, giving 11 hours 23 minutes of daylight. That sunset governs the evening. The Sunset Celebration at Mallory Square starts about two hours ahead of it, so around 4:20 p.m. in mid-month, and keeps going until dusk has faded. Dinner in the dark means dinner after 6:45, late for a day that began at seven.

Can you swim in Key West in February? Sea temperature and what it feels like

The water off Key West averages 76.3°F in February in the Open-Meteo Marine record, taken over 2015 to 2024. Read that figure carefully: it is the mean of daily maximum readings, so it runs a shade warmer than a 24-hour average, and the sea at eight in the morning is cooler than the number suggests. February is also the low point of the winter trio, with January at 76.5°F and March at 78.6°F.

Mid-70s water under 77°F air is a swim rather than a soak. Wading in costs you a breath and twenty seconds, then it is pleasant, and most people stay in half an hour with nothing on but a swimsuit. Snorkelers who plan to float rather than move usually want a shorty or at least a rash guard by the second hour. Fort Zachary Taylor’s beach, the one locals nominate as the island’s best, is a walk from Old Town and costs $2.50 if you arrive on foot or by bicycle.

We could not verify a February wind or wave series for Key West, so we give no figures for either. What is dated and certain: the Atlantic hurricane season runs June 1 to November 30 and peaks on September 10, per the National Hurricane Center, so a February booking carries no storm-season risk. A boat day can still be called off for weather. Check the operator the evening before, and check again at check-in if you are crossing to Dry Tortugas.

How busy is Key West in February? Crowds, parking and the lodging tax

February belongs to Florida’s dry season, November through April, the stretch the state built its winter travel on, and the statewide calendar lays out the pattern. We found no occupancy series and no monthly room-rate series for Key West, so we crown no month expensive and no month cheap. One crowd variable is settled: the cruise limits voters approved in November 2020, a cap of 1,500 disembarking passengers a day and a ban on ships carrying more than 1,300 people, were nullified by SB 1194, written to apply retroactively. No local cap governs February arrivals.

Book the boat before the room. The Yankee Freedom III, the ferry to Dry Tortugas, leaves at 8 a.m. daily with check-in closing before 7:30, and the 2026 adult fare of about $250 covers the park entrance, snorkel gear, breakfast and lunch. It sells out weeks ahead, and a month of lead time is the minimum we would plan on. Rooms and rental cars in a dry-season month reward the same habit: lock the nights first, then build the itinerary around the one morning that cannot move.

Monroe County levies a 5.0% transient rental tax, filed and paid alongside the 6% state sales tax, so 11% lands on the room rate at checkout before any property adds a resort fee or parking of its own. It applies to a hotel night, a guesthouse and a short-term rental alike. Treat it as part of the nightly cost rather than a surprise at the end. Our Florida trip cost guide runs the same arithmetic for the rest of the state.

The one line where paying more genuinely changes the month is the car. Street meters run $3.00 an hour. The Old Town Parking Garage charges $6 an hour or $48 a day plus tax, the Mallory Square lot asks $7 an hour or $48 a day with a ten-hour maximum, and the Key West Bight lot is $5 an hour or $40 a day. Old Town is the largest wooden historic district in North America and it is flat, so a car parked once on arrival and left alone costs far less than the same car moved four times.

Things to do in Key West in February: Fort Zachary Taylor, the Hemingway Home and Dry Tortugas

February does two things no summer month does. It falls outside hurricane season, and it pairs 77.4°F air with only 2.4 wet days, so the 70-mile crossing to Dry Tortugas and a whole day in the open are reasonable bets rather than a gamble against the afternoon. Florida’s wet season, May through October, brings near-daily afternoon storms and heat to match. In February the plan you make at breakfast is usually the plan you finish.

Fort Zachary Taylor Historic State Park opens 8 a.m. to sundown, 365 days a year, at $6.00 per vehicle for up to eight people plus a $0.50 county surcharge per person, $4.50 for a single-occupant vehicle or motorcycle, $2.50 on foot or by bicycle. The fort itself shuts at 5 p.m. The Ernest Hemingway Home and Museum takes walk-ins 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day, $19 adults and $7 children, free under six, and the museum’s own account traces its polydactyl cats to Snow White. Dry Tortugas has no road and no bridge: ferry or seaplane, 70 miles west.

The water at these places barely notices the calendar. The sea off Fort Zach reads 76.3°F in February and 78.6°F in March, a difference you feel in the first minute and forget by the fifth. What moves is the air and the clock. With sundown at 6:22 p.m. on the 15th and the fort closing at 5, February leaves roughly eighty minutes of beach after the last visitor comes down off the ramparts, and the 67.1°F low is still hours away.

Free in February, as in every month: the Sunset Celebration on the Mallory Square dock, every night of the year, weather permitting, from about two hours before sunset until dusk fades. Mile Marker 0 at Whitehead and Fleming marks the southern end of US-1, which runs roughly 2,370 miles north to Fort Kent, Maine. The Duval Loop bus costs nothing across 18 Old Town stops, though published frequencies disagree, from every 20 minutes on one schedule to every 15 minutes after mid-morning on another. Read the stop sign. It does not serve the airport.

Key West in February: a two-day itinerary

Day one runs on foot. Take the Hemingway Home at its 9 a.m. opening, $19 for adults, then walk the Old Town grid to Mile Marker 0 at Whitehead and Fleming. Eat lunch indoors through the warmest hours. Walk into Fort Zachary Taylor after two o’clock for $2.50, see the fort before it closes at 5, and keep the beach until you leave for Mallory Square, where the Sunset Celebration is under way by about 4:20 p.m. and the sun drops at 6:22.

Day two is the boat or nothing else. Check-in for the Yankee Freedom III closes before 7:30 a.m. for an 8 a.m. departure, and Dry Tortugas takes the rest of the day. If the crossing is called off, or if you have landed on one of the 2.4 wet days, keep the fallback indoors and close together: the Hemingway Home if you skipped it, a slice of the key lime pie reported to have started here in the late nineteenth century and named Florida’s official state pie in 2006, and the free Duval Loop between them instead of a meter at $3.00 an hour.

Key West in February vs January and March

Set the three side by side and February lands in the middle by air and at the bottom by water. Its 77.4°F high runs 1.6 degrees above January and 2.2 below March. Its 1.54 inches of rain all but match March’s 1.53, but they spread over 2.4 wet days against 2.9 in March and 3.3 in January, so February carries the best odds of a dry day. The sea is the exception, at 76.3°F against 76.5 in January and 78.6 in March.

Shift four weeks forward and you buy 2.2 degrees of air, 2.3 degrees of water and a later sunset, and you pay in company, because March is spring break across Florida. Shift four weeks back and January gives you a wetter month, 1.83 inches over 3.3 days, in exchange for water warmer by two-tenths of a degree at 76.5°F. Between those two, February is the trade most winter trips should take.

Is February a good time to visit Key West?

Yes for most people, and especially for a long weekend built on outdoor days: 77.4°F highs, 2.4 wet days, 11 hours 23 minutes of daylight on the 15th, and no storm season to watch. No for two groups. Anyone who wants bathwater will find 76.3°F a swim with a gasp in it. Anyone hoping for an empty island should know that February sits squarely in Florida’s winter season, and that no local cap has limited cruise arrivals since SB 1194.

If that reads as a no, March is the month to move to: 79.6°F days, 78.6°F water, 1.53 inches of rain across 2.9 days. The price is spring break, which fills the beach towns statewide. Pick your vacation weeks against the statewide calendar first, and if a rental car is part of the plan, getting around Florida covers the all-electronic tolls waiting on the way down.

In one line: February gives the fewest wet days of the three winter months, 2.4 of them, on an island where the boats sail and the hurricane calendar is blank.

The last word

Settle the boat first and the rest of the trip arranges itself around an 8 a.m. departure. Then settle how you arrive. Key West has its own airport, EYW, so you can fly in and skip the drive entirely, or take the road from Miami: about 155 miles, the all-electronic Homestead Extension of Florida’s Turnpike with no cash booths down to Florida City, then US-1 alone for the 113 miles of Overseas Highway, four hours nonstop and six to eight with stops. Make one of them the Marathon end of the old Seven Mile Bridge, where two restored miles are open to walkers and there is a car park at the near end. On the new bridge there is nowhere safe to pull over.

Sources & data for this guide

• February normals: 77.4°F high, 67.1°F low, 1.54 in, 2.4 days at 0.10 in or more, 0.4 day at 1 in or more · NOAA NCEI monthly normals 1991-2020, station USW00012836, Key West International Airport · checked Sep 23, 2026
• January and March normals used in the comparison · same NOAA NCEI 1991-2020 series, same station · checked Sep 23, 2026
• Sea surface 76.3°F, mean of daily maxima 2015-2024 · Open-Meteo Marine API · checked Sep 23, 2026
• Daylight, sunrise and sunset for February 15, converted to Eastern Time · sunrise-sunset.org · checked Sep 23, 2026
• Hurricane season dates and September 10 peak · NOAA National Hurricane Center · checked Sep 23, 2026
• Monroe County 5.0% transient rental tax with the 6% state sales tax · Florida Department of Revenue, form DR-15TDT · checked Sep 23, 2026
• Fort Zachary Taylor fees and hours · Florida State Parks · checked Sep 23, 2026
• Hemingway Home hours and admission · hemingwayhome.com · checked Sep 23, 2026. The Snow White ancestry of the cats is the museum’s own account and our only source for it.
• Yankee Freedom III schedule, 2026 adult fare and what it includes · drytortugas.com · checked Sep 23, 2026. Fares change.
• Parking rates at meters, the Old Town garage, Mallory Square and Key West Bight · City of Key West Parking Department · checked Sep 23, 2026. Rates change.
• Duval Loop, 18 stops and free fare · City of Key West and local guides · checked Sep 23, 2026. Sources disagree on frequency and operating hours, so we give the wide range and point you to the stop sign.
• Mile Marker 0 and the length of US-1 · Atlas Obscura and Key West Travel Guide · checked Sep 23, 2026. Sources give 2,369 and 2,390 miles, so we round to about 2,370.
• Sunset Celebration timing · sunsetcelebration.org · checked Sep 23, 2026
• Cruise referendum of November 2020 and SB 1194 · Seatrade Cruise and Florida Politics · checked Sep 23, 2026
• Route from Miami, Turnpike tolls and Overseas Highway mileage · Florida Turnpike and AARoads · checked Sep 23, 2026. Drive times are indicative.
• We found no occupancy or monthly room-rate series for Key West, so we rank no month by price. We could not verify February wind or wave statistics, and we could not verify any February event dates, so we name no events.

To plan your stay

• Things to Do in Key West: Hours, Prices, Hemingway House and the Dry Tortugas Ferry
• Where to Stay in Key West: Old Town, New Town and What Parking Costs
• Key West Airport to Old Town: Transfers, Parking and the Drive from Miami
• What to Know Before You Go to Key West: Parking, the Free Duval Loop, Sunset and the Dry Tortugas Ferry

Nearby places

• Everglades National Park: The Complete Visitor's Guide
• Big Cypress National Preserve: Dark Sky Park, Swamp Buggies and the $100 ORV Permit
• Dry Tortugas National Park: Ferry, the $15 Entrance Fee and Camping on Garden Key