Plumes of dust often travel thousands of miles from Africa to the Americas. The peak activity happens between June and mid-August.

The summer of 2024 was extremely hot and drought-free! The summer of 2025 has been hot, and a severe drought has affected over 6 million people in southeastern Florida. What changed this year?

Tropical Storm Dexter moves away from the U.S., not impacting Florida. The tropics have become active, and there are two other areas we are monitoring.

According to National Weather Service figures, heat killed 199 Americans last year. That is more than double the second leading cause of weather-related deaths in the United States, flooding, which killed 89 Americans in 2024. The danger posed by weather events like tornadoes, hurricanes and lightning is straightforward, but many people do not accurately perceive the level of risk posed by heat. A day with dangerous heat will look like an average sunny day, and sometimes the symptoms of heat illness are initially ignored.

As we approach the peak of hurricane season, tropical activity tends to ramp up in August with more tropical waves emerging from Africa. These are the three historical areas where most storms have formed.

Florida House Bill 7031 was signed on June 30 and eliminates state sales tax on hurricane kit essentials. The law takes effect Aug. 1.

Tampa broke the all-time record high temperature on Sunday. There are at least 10 stations in Florida that could either break or tie the high records on Monday. How much longer?

Much of Florida takes a break from the storms, and Saharan dust takes over, making the temperatures soar.

Lightning comes in different varieties, the most common kinds don't reach the ground, called intra-cloud and cloud-to-cloud. Cloud to ground lightning actually only makes up about 10-20% of strikes. About 1% is ground to cloud. Then one of the outlier forms of lightning stretches for miles (sometimes dozens of miles) horizontally and can resemble a spider web, and that’s why it’s called spider lightning. We learn about ongoing research at Florida Gulf Coast University into this form of lightning with the instructor who is leading it and a student who helped her work with the data.

The low-pressure system has a short amount of time to develop before it moves over land.