Hurricanes

The first named storm of Hurricane Season has kicked off what it expected to be a busy storm period. A new app has been released the offers up-to-date information about a variety of weather concerns.

Following the series of storms that have battered Fort Myers Beach, the island community is slowly churning along on its massive rebuild.

As part of of budgets cuts, staff reductions were made to both NOAA and FEMA. As Hurricane Season arrives, the Trump Administration is looking to add over 100 employees to help stabilize operations.

For years the city was eking by, but now has made substantial gain in appeasing the feds

Dr. Christopher Landsea is Chief of the Tropical Analysis and Forecast Branch at the National Hurricane Center in Miami, where his team generates wind and wave forecasts for the Caribbean Sea, Gulf of Mexico, tropical North Atlantic Ocean, and tropical northeastern Pacific Ocean. He was on the Florida Gulf Coast University campus last week to give a talk so we brought him by the studio to talk about hurricane meteorology and forecasting and how it’s evolved over time and what lies ahead as technology advances.

Floridians whose property sustained damage from Hurricane Idalia have until Nov. 29 to apply for federal assistance.

As of Friday morning there were three systems in various stages of development in the Atantic and one heading west in the Gulf of Mexico.

The National Hurricane Center provided an update on the three systems now being watched in the tropical Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico Tuesday.

Terry Brennen, retired director of community funding for WGCU public media, had been infected with Vibrio vulnificus, a saltwater bacteria carried in storm surge that’s has led to an unprecedented spike in cases in Florida – 65 so far this year – the most since the health department began tracking cases in 2008.

Sharon Faircloth has three businesses on Fort Myers Beach and 30 employees out of their jobs, so she plans to pivot her mission, working to help officials with hurricane recovery efforts.