Silver Glen Springs in December: Weather, Rain Days and Freezing Nights

SILVER GLEN SPRINGS · DECEMBER · FLORIDA

December hands this spring a split personality on the thermometer. The air over this part of Florida averages a 69.3°F high and a 45.2°F low for the month on 1991-2020 normals, while the vent at the bottom of the swim area keeps pushing water out at a volume the USGS clocked at 87 cubic feet per second on a September 2026 reading. Warm enough at two in the afternoon to eat lunch on the bank in a T-shirt. Cold enough at seven in the morning for the fleece you almost left in the car.

What changes between months is the air you cross to reach the water, plus the odds of rain while you are out in it. Both have figures, and so does the trade against November and January. For the drive, the budget and where to sleep around it, our Florida guides carry the rest of the trip.

Clear spring water over pale sand, with palms and live oaks lining the bank of the run — The run below the vent, where 87 cubic feet a second leaves the ground · Illustration

THE MONTH AT A GLANCE · DECEMBER

December gives you a spring that swims the way it swims in July, under air that moves 24 degrees between a 45.2°F dawn and a 69.3°F afternoon: come for the middle of the day and pack for the edges.

NOAA NORMALS 1991-2020 · USGS GAUGE 02236160 · 3.7 FREEZING NIGHTS

Average high69.3°F

Average low45.2°F

Rain2.88 in · 4.5 wet days

Freezing nights3.7

Daylight, Dec 1510h 20m

Spring flow87 cu ft/s (Sep 2026)

Go for: swimming without summer heat, midweek days in the first half of the month, and a daylight window you can plan to the minute.

Think twice before: camping without cold-weather gear, since 3.7 nights in an average December fall to 32°F or below.

Air normals: NOAA NCEI 1991-2020, Gainesville Rgnl AP · Flow: USGS NWIS 02236160 · full sources at the end

Silver Glen Springs weather in DecemberHighs of 69.3°F, lows of 45.2°F
How cold the mornings getA 24.1-degree swing and 3.7 freezing nights
How busy December is, and what it costsDry season, holiday weeks and what we could not price
Things to do in DecemberThe vent at 87 cubic feet a second
A two-day plan around a 5:31 p.m. sunsetDay one and day two, hour by hour
December vs November and JanuaryHow the three months compare
Is December a good time to go?Yes for swimmers, no for tent campers

One thing to settle before the figures start. Every air temperature here comes from NOAA’s 1991-2020 monthly normals for GAINESVILLE RGNL AP, a real thermometer at a real airfield about 48 miles away, rather than a grid cell from a reanalysis model. It is the nearest official record we could read. Treat it as the regional air, accurate to within the difference that 48 miles and a forest can make, and treat the water as a separate matter: the spring itself has no season.

Silver Glen Springs weather in December: average highs, lows and rain days

Measure	December normal
Average high	69.3°F
Average low	45.2°F
Precipitation	2.88 in
Days at 0.10 in or more	4.5
Days at 1.00 in or more	0.9
Nights at 32°F or below	3.7
Daylight on Dec 15	10h 20m · 7:12 a.m. to 5:31 p.m.

NOAA’s normals put December’s average high at 69.3°F and its average low at 45.2°F, with 2.88 inches of precipitation across the month. They come from station USW00012816, Gainesville Regional Airport, over the 1991-2020 period. A normal is a thirty-year average, so it describes the shape of a typical December rather than any particular one, and individual days land well above and well below that 69.3.

Measurable rain falls on 4.5 days in an average December, counting every day that reaches at least 0.10 inch. Call it one day in seven. Spread 2.88 inches across those 4.5 days and you get an average of about 0.64 inch each time it rains, so when December rains here it tends to mean it. On a four-day trip the arithmetic says you give up part of one day and keep the others, and a dry three-day forecast is worth booking around.

The gap between that 69.3°F afternoon and that 45.2°F night is 24.1 degrees, and it is the figure that packs your bag. Swimsuit and towel cover the middle of the day. The first and last hours want long pants, closed shoes and a warm layer you can strip off, plus something dry to change into on the bank, because air in the forties ends a swim quickly. Bring a knit hat and a dry change of clothes; both weigh nothing and both get used at seven in the morning.

Daylight on December 15 runs about 10 hours 20 minutes, from a 7:12 a.m. sunrise to a 5:31 p.m. sunset in local Eastern time. The usable warm block sits between roughly 11 a.m. and 4 p.m., which is short enough that a slow start costs you the swim rather than the drive. Anyone heading back toward Orlando or Gainesville after the last dip is doing part of it in the dark, so fuel and food before sunset.

How warm is Silver Glen Springs in December?

The month’s two anchor figures are the 69.3°F average high and the 45.2°F average low, a spread of 24.1 degrees inside a single day. Both are averages of daily readings across thirty Decembers, so the warmest afternoons and the coldest dawns hide inside them. For the water we have no figure at all: our sources gave us no measured temperature at the vent, so none appears here. What the gauge reports is volume, 87 cubic feet per second when the USGS read it on September 11, 2026.

In practice, December mornings are jeans weather and December afternoons are shorts weather, and you will do both before dinner. Arrive dressed for 50 degrees, keep the swim gear in a dry bag, and change once the sun has been up three or four hours. The return trip matters more than the arrival: climbing out at 4:30, an hour from sunset, is the moment people underdress for. A hooded sweatshirt does more work here than a technical jacket.

Frost belongs in the picture too. In an average December, 3.7 nights at the Gainesville station fall to 32°F or below, roughly one night in eight. That is enough to turn a tent with a summer sleeping bag into a long night, and enough that a car parked outside can want five minutes of defrosting before an eight o’clock start. Florida in December is warm at lunch and genuinely cold at dawn.

How busy is Silver Glen Springs in December? Crowds, prices and booking ahead

December sits inside Florida’s dry season, November through April. That stretch is the half of the calendar the whole state is built around, and our best-time guide lays out all twelve months of it. Past that calendar fact we will not rank the month on price: we found no occupancy series and no monthly room-rate series for this part of Florida, so we crown no month expensive and no month cheap. The calendar does say one useful thing. The last two weeks of December carry school holidays nationwide, and the first two do not.

That split is what you book around. A midweek night in the first half of the month is the relaxed version of this trip, and a decision you can leave until the weekend before. The holiday stretch is the one to lock as early as you are willing to commit, because families travel then whether or not anyone publishes a number for it. We have no booking-window data, so that is calendar logic rather than a measurement, and we would rather say which it is.

Two cost lines we could not pin down. We could not verify a county lodging-tax rate, so no percentage appears. And we found no entrance fee and no opening hours for Silver Glen Springs itself: floridastateparks.org returned a 403 error to our automated reads on September 11, 2026, and a fee quoted for a different Florida spring does not transfer to this one. Call the recreation area, or ask your host, before the drive out.

If one line in the budget deserves the upgrade in December, it is the bed. In a month with 3.7 nights at freezing, the difference between a tent and a room with a hot shower is the difference between two good days and one good day with a rough night wedged in it. Everything else scales down easily, cooler included. Our Florida cost guide breaks the daily spend into tiers, and the lodging guide covers the regions.

Things to do in Silver Glen Springs in December

A swimmer wading out of clear spring water toward a sandy bank under bare winter light — Getting out is the cold part in December, not getting in · Illustration

December is the month when reaching the water stops being work. Summer here brings heat, humidity and the near-daily afternoon thunderstorm of the wet season, and a 69.3°F afternoon removes all three at once. Anyone who drives to a Florida spring to escape 95-degree air has no reason to in December, so we would expect a thinner Saturday, though we hold no visitor counts and will not pretend otherwise. What is left is swimming for its own sake.

The thing worth standing over is the vent. USGS station 02236160 sits on Silver Glen Springs, and its instantaneous reading on September 11, 2026 was 87 cubic feet per second leaving the ground. That volume is why the water is clear: it gets replaced faster than it can cloud. Florida law keeps a category called Outstanding Florida Springs for every historic first-magnitude spring the Florida Geological Survey recognizes, plus six named by hand in the statute.

Nothing about that flow shifts between July and December. The air does all the moving, and that gap is the season here: 74.7°F afternoons in November, 69.3°F in December, 67.1°F in January, over a spring that reads the same all year. The consequence shows up when you climb out. Bring twice the towel you think you need, keep a dry layer within arm’s reach of the water, and leave the wet swimsuit for the parking lot rather than the drive home.

One free thing to use before you leave the house: the USGS publishes gauge 02236160 openly, so you can see what the spring is doing before spending a morning driving to it. It costs nothing and takes ten seconds. If manatees are your reason for coming, note that we could not verify any count for this spring, and our manatee guide covers the sites where winter numbers are published.

Silver Glen Springs in December: a two-day itinerary

Day one is built on a 7:12 a.m. sunrise and a 5:31 p.m. sunset. Leave at eight rather than six, since the first hours of a December day here sit near 45°F and nothing improves by arriving cold. Be at the spring by nine or ten and walk first. Swim between eleven and three, when the air runs nearest its 69.3°F mark, and eat on the bank around one. Be dry and changed by four, with roughly ninety minutes of light left for the road.

Day two takes the same shape with the swim pulled earlier and the drive started before dark. Weather turns in one of two ways in this month. A rain day, one of the 4.5 in an average December, pushes the water back a few hours and the driving forward. A cold front rearranges the morning more than rain does: after one of those 3.7 freezing nights, skip the nine o’clock start, let the sun work until eleven, and take the warmest three hours the day has to offer.

Silver Glen Springs in December vs November and January

Measure	November	December	January
Average high	74.7°F	69.3°F	67.1°F
Average low	50.6°F	45.2°F	42.6°F
Precipitation	1.79 in	2.88 in	3.29 in
Days at 0.10 in or more	3.0	4.5	5.2

All three columns come from the same NOAA station and the same 1991-2020 period, so they compare cleanly. November runs 5.4°F warmer by day and 5.4°F warmer by night than December. January takes back another 2.2°F on the high and 2.6°F on the low. Rain climbs steadily across the three: 1.79 inches, then 2.88, then 3.29, with wet days going 3.0, 4.5, 5.2. The water is identical in all three columns, because the spring has no season.

Shift four weeks earlier and November buys warmer air at both ends of the day, an inch less rain and 1.5 fewer wet days, which makes it the strongest of the three for anyone who hates cold mornings (the November page has that month in full). Shift four weeks later and January asks 2.2°F off your afternoon, 2.6°F off your night and 0.7 of an extra wet day, then hands back a calendar with the school break finished.

Is December a good time to visit Silver Glen Springs?

Yes for swimmers who would rather arrive comfortable than arrive overheated, and yes for anyone who counts a 69.3°F afternoon as perfect walking weather. No for a family planning six hours at the water with small children, since a 45.2°F morning and a 5:31 p.m. sunset squeeze the usable day down to about five hours. And no for tent camping unless the bags are rated to 32°F, because 3.7 nights a month get there.

When the answer lands on no, November is the repair rather than January: 74.7°F days, 50.6°F nights, 1.79 inches of rain across three wet days, and exactly the same water at the end of the walk. Going the other direction only deepens whatever you were avoiding, since January is cooler on both readings and wetter on every line of the table above.

What December offers that the other two do not is a 69.3°F afternoon packed inside the shortest daylight of the year. Among these three months, none makes the start time matter more.

The last word

Set the start time and the rest of this trip arranges itself: out of bed in the dark, in the water by eleven, dry and changed by four. One more figure worth packing for, and it is a cheerful one: 0.9 day in an average December brings an inch of rain or more, so a typical December delivers a single washout and thirty days that are not. Check the gauge, throw in the second towel and the knit hat, and aim for a Tuesday.

← November
Silver Glen Springs month by month
January →

Sources & data for this guide

December air normals (69.3°F high, 45.2°F low, 2.88 in), 4.5 days at 0.10 in, 0.9 day at 1.00 in, 3.7 nights at 32°F or below · NOAA NCEI monthly normals 1991-2020, station USW00012816, GAINESVILLE RGNL AP, FL US · checked Sep 24, 2026
November and January normals · same NOAA NCEI 1991-2020 series, same station · checked Sep 24, 2026
Station distance: about 78 km (roughly 48 miles) from the spring, so the air figures describe the region rather than the bank of the run · NOAA NCEI station metadata · checked Sep 24, 2026
Daylight, sunrise and sunset on December 15 (12:12 and 22:31 UTC, converted to Eastern time) · sunrise-sunset.org · checked Sep 24, 2026
Spring discharge, 87 cubic feet per second, one instantaneous reading rather than a monthly mean · USGS National Water Information System, station 02236160 Silver Glen Springs · read Sep 11, 2026
Outstanding Florida Springs definition · Florida Statutes 373.802(5), leg.state.fl.us · checked Sep 24, 2026
No entrance fee, opening hour or manatee count could be read: floridastateparks.org returned 403 to automated reads and the FWC manatee pages render client-side · Sep 11, 2026. Fees and hours change · call before you drive.