Discovered on Mar. 30, a relatively small brush fire in South Florida’s Big Cypress National Preserve (eastern Collier County) grew slowly during the following week. By Apr. 8, the Cow Bell fire (so named, because it is near the Cow Bell Strand within the Big Cypress National Park – Fig.
Read DetailsBULLETIN: Four Naples groundhogs spied their shadows early Thursday morning. Hence, look for six more weeks of south Florida winter. Yahoo! Punxsutawney Phil does not have a sterling record of furcasting the weather for the last six weeks of winter, even though the official Punxsutawney web site says otherwise. I
Read DetailsBatten down the hatches (and be prepared to take shelter today and tonight) if you live or are traveling across the southeast U.S. The Storm Prediction has issued a highly unusual severe weather outlook for the region – calling for a moderate to high severe weather risk for South Carolina,
Read DetailsAcross the South, this Sunday morning, Jan. 8, 2017, folks were pulling out their winter clothing. Temperatures that plunged to below freezing levels across Texas and much of the Gulf Coast east to the western Florida Panhandle on Saturday morning did so again this morning. However, today, the sub-freezing
Read DetailsDense fog advisories (Fig. 1) as well as the fog they describe (Fig. 2), covered southwest Florida early this Friday morning (Jan. 6, 2017). Some places had 0-0 visibility (that is, zero feet both horizontally and vertically); other places had visibilities of several miles horizontally and several hundreds of feet
Read DetailsThe other day, I wrote about the arrival of a strong cold front in south Florida. That front arrived with a significant chill down. Low temperature readings, this Saturday morning (Dec. 31, 2016), were in the 40’s across many areas of southwest Florida. Even with relatively light north winds, wind
Read DetailsOnce a strong Pacific cold front barrels through south Florida later today, attention will shift to windier weather and much chiller temperatures. The combined effect of wind and temperature will contribute to unusually low wind chills for the area. Wind chill is a measure of heat loss from exposed skin.
Read DetailsLast week, I reported on south Florida’s record warmth and indicated that more records were likely to be broken. This week, I get to report that several south and central Florida locales have again set some warm temperature records. A total of seven occurred in the three-day period encompassing Christmas.
Read DetailsA persistent upper level ridge (Fig. 1) across Florida and a jet stream far to the north of Florida have both prevented most cold air intrusions from reaching into the Sunshine State. The result has been a very dry and very warm autumn. In recent days, however, this pattern of
Read DetailsSouth Florida experiences “cool front” passages fairly often during the chillier months of the year. These bring wind shifts (winds northerly and northwesterly, quickly turning to northeasterly), and a modest drop in temperatures and a more significant drop in dew point temperatures. In summer months, very weak “cool fronts” occasionally
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