In fact, the land where Gov. Ron DeSantis’ administration quickly erected the new immigrant detention center, which is expected to eventually hold 3,000 or more people, has been deeply controversial since the 1960s.

It was supposed to be the planet’s largest jetport and inspire a new city in the middle of the Everglades.

Bipartisan outrage over those dreams (or nightmares) united an odd cross section of Floridians: birder watchers, hunters, native tribes, blue-collar plumbers and Republican advisers.

This David-and-Goliath battle pitted them against heavy hitters: the Dade County Port Authority, the Federal Aviation Administration, the state of Florida, the air transport industry and eager chambers of commerce.

The ensuing fight over the jetport, which eventually drew in then-President Richard Nixon’s administration, was the catalyst for creating Big Cypress National Preserve, and helped shape the environmental movement we know today.

And the bipartisan outrage of the 1960s echoes through today’s protests about that same piece of land.

Heady times and jetport dreams

The 1960s were heady times for Florida. The population jumped by 40%, ramping from about five million in 1960 to nearly seven million by 1970.

As the population (and real estate values) boomed, the Dade County Port Authority started buying up 39 square miles of cypress swamp and Miccosukee ceremonial sites that sat a few miles from both Everglades National Park and Miccosukee tribal land.

They had a dream of building the world’s largest jetport. It would be five times the size of JFK International Airport, big enough to welcome 50 million passengers and one million flights a year, and would serve both the east and west coasts of the state.

The Port Authority had “Jetsons”-esque ambitions — South Florida was poised for global greatness, and the Everglades were in the way.

They claimed Miami’s existing airport would reach capacity by 1973: South Florida needed the jetport!

According to the National Park Service, the plan called for a corridor three football fields wide to span across the Everglades from Miami to the jetport, and then on through the Big Cypress Swamp to the west coast. There’d be both an interstate highway and a train shuttle ripping through at 200 mph.

The maximalist vision of the jetport supporters was that Miami would sprawl 40 miles out into the Everglades and eventually envelop the jetport.

Historian Jack Davis, of the University of Florida, has devoted his studies to the state’s history. He wrote extensively about the battle over the jetport in his 2009 Marjory Stoneman Douglas biography, “An Everglades Providence: Marjory Stoneman Douglas and the American Environmental Century.”

Davis writes that Port Authority director Alan Stewart “envisioned an industrial center congealing around the jetport and the city of Miami expanding toward it. … A new city is going to rise up in the middle of Florida, whether you like it or not.”

The assumption was that development, by definition, brought benefits to the region.

The benefits of saving the only Everglades in the world, and the region’s water supply, were not part of the equation. What harm could come from jet fuel?

‘We thought it was a done deal’

According to Davis, the Port Authority and Federal Aviation Administration did not consult with the national park when selecting the site for the jetport, even though the jetport was upstream from the park and would either flow pollution in or dry it out.

A reporter turned president of the local chapter of the Audubon Society, the late Joe Browder, had the reputation of being a “tenacious bulldog” and a “brash militant.” Those tendencies would come in handy during the impending fight, in which he would pull together an oddball team of conservationists and change the fate of South Florida.

The jetport broke ground in 1968. Much like the DeSantis administration’s rapid-fire build-out of Alligator Alcatraz, which relied on emergency declarations, the Port Authority’s strategy was to build as quickly as possible.

“DeSantis’ position is that illegal immigration is an emergency. … One might say it stretches the definition of an emergency,” said Aubrey Jewett, professor of political science at the University of Central Florida. “An emergency is something that happens very quickly and requires an immediate response.”

Jewett uses the 1980 Mariel boatlift as an example of something that was an immigration emergency. “With little notice, Fidel Castro allowed Cubans to leave the island, and it happened in a brief window of time, and involved hundreds of thousands of people coming to one area — Miami. Literally local communities were overwhelmed.”

“You know, it was just like the Alligator Alcatraz thing — the public didn’t know about the jetport, and the Port Authority was quietly buying up all that land behind the scenes, and we were caught off guard,” said Franklin Adams, who was a crucial part of the jetport battle.

He was in his 20s in the late 1960s when he joined Browder in the fight as a member of the sportsman’s group the Izaak Walton League. He fell in love with Florida wilderness while tagging along as a teen with his father, a land surveyor. “I started seeing some of these incredible places that he surveyed get destroyed, diked. With us going out and roaming the Big Cypress and Everglades, we saw beautiful tree islands inundated and destroyed.”

By the time Browder, Adams and other conservationists became organized, some of the runways were already built, and real estate signs started popping up. “We thought it was a done deal,” Adams said. Adams is now 87 and lives in a rural area not far from Big Cypress National Preserve.

As the bulldozers were prepping the swamp for pending runways, Adams and friend Charles Garrett managed to get a meeting with one of the heavy hitters: Port Authority deputy chief Richard Judy. Adams and Garrett implored Judy to reconsider the jetport location. “It was in the watershed of Everglades National Park, (I explained) all the problems it would cause.”

The meeting did not last long. Judy listened briefly, then abruptly ended the meeting, saying that the men had wasted their time and his, Adams recalled. “Well, after that happened, it made us more determined than ever to fight that thing and stop it,” Adams said.

Once the cat was out of the bag, developers on both coasts grew frothy at the mouth. An advertisement of the day read, “Mammoth jetport to whisk community into the future: The future development of Marco Island received a tremendous boost recently with the start of construction of a mammoth jetport, the biggest ever, anywhere just 48 miles away.”

The Collier family and the JC Turner Lumber Company owned much of the land in Big Cypress swamp, and started selling it off at $10 an acre. “People were buying it from all over the world,” Adams said.

According to the Florida National Park Association, real estate billboards were popping up all along the Tamiami Trail at the time the airport was planned. “$10.00 down, $10.00 a month, buy land, get rich,” one read.

“Airport in Glades Could Bring in $$” read a 1967 Miami Herald headline. A local politician at the time predicted it would be the most important airport in the region by 1990.

An unlikely coalition

Browder knew the local Audubon Society couldn’t take this fight on alone. He would need to build a coalition.

Florida Gov. Claude Kirk had shoveled dirt at the jetport groundbreaking with a grin on his face, but his special assistant on the environment, Republican Nathaniel Reed, was troubled by what he considered runaway development in Florida.

Reed grew up exploring and fishing around Jupiter Island. He was disgusted by the slash-and-burn development mentality in Florida, and felt that the “Great God of Growth” was decimating his state. Reed imagined what the land he loved would look like if the jetport dreams came true, and took a stance against it. He had the governor’s ear, as well as some in Washington, D.C.

Browder also connected with famed environmentalist Marjory Stoneman Douglas, who then founded the nonprofit Friends of the Everglades in order to fight the jetport.

Browder pulled in other potential allies as well. “Astute in ways other environmentalists were not, he recognized that environmental concerns were not the sole province of the middle class or the social elite,” wrote Davis in his book. Browder set up meetings with those who actually used Big Cypress Swamp — hunters and gladesmen, and Native American tribes.

Browder met with Buffalo Tiger, leader of the Miccosukee Tribe of Florida. According to Davis, the Port Authority had told Tiger that the jetport would be environmentally benign and would not damage their way of life. Besides, any development would bring jobs to the tribe.

But Tiger was skeptical. “It happens to Indians year after year: Progress wasting the hunting grounds,” Tiger told a New York Times reporter at the time.

His skepticism was warranted. At some point during the build, construction equipment had leveled the ceremonial site of the Miccosukee’s Green Corn dance, where every new year, the tribe inducted boys into manhood in a ceremony.

There was one glaring problem with what Browder was bringing to the tribes and the closely linked hunters and gladesmen. The jetport fight was explicitly tied to the protection of Big Cypress Swamp by making it a national park.

But most of the coalition hated the idea. Many felt abused by the creation of Everglades National Park in 1947, which had displaced a fishing village in Flamingo, at the southern tip of the park, and had caused resentment among the Miccosukee, some of whom lived south of Tamiami Trail, in what would become the park.

A national park also would mean the end of hunting and private property in Big Cypress. “These people were from old, old families, some of them going back to the 1860s after the Civil War, when they came down to this country,” Adams said. “They said, ‘You know, we’ve got our family cabins, retreats on the Big Cypress now, and if it becomes a national park, we’re going to lose all those.”

The parties came up with a solution; Big Cypress could be a preserve, not a national park. A preserve — the first ever in the U.S. — meant hunters could still hunt, swamp buggies could still roll through the sawgrass prairies and airboats could still zip over sawgrass.

Those with hunting camps could keep them. It also meant its mineral rights could still be sold by the Collier family, which is why there are several active oil rigs in the preserve.

“Nat Reed and Joe Browder got with them,” said Adams, with Browder arguing that if you don’t push back on the jetport, “there’ll be a Kmart out there where you park your swamp buggy. You’re going to lose one way or the other.”

But they needed a guarantee that they’d be able to keep their hunting camps and the right to hunt and use swamp buggies and air boats. They got it, and eventually began to see the light, said Adams.

Not everyone was on board. Adams said advocates for Big Cypress National Preserve had their tires slashed, and he and a friend had to sneak out the back door of a bar near Everglades City when a pack of locals threatened them.

Johnny Jones, a plumber and hunter from Hialeah, would become a cultural connector and savvy teammate. He led the 50,000-member Florida Wildlife Federation, which was filled with hunters. Airboat and swamp buggy groups also joined in. A jetport alone might not ruin their hunting grounds, but the ensuing development would end the world they loved so much.

“Like many of us, he started seeing a lot of these special places ditched and diked and drained by the Army Corps of Engineers, the water management districts, so he got involved,” Adams said.

Jones’ involvement, his connections in Tallahassee and his ability to cajole, became invaluable, Adams said. “Big Cypress and stopping the jetport wouldn’t have happened if they hadn’t come around.”

Beers, gators and an unexpected friend

Even with Reed at the governor’s ear, it became clear that to overcome the Goliaths, Browder, Reed, Adams and Jones would need friends in higher places than Miami or Tallahassee. Alligators, fittingly, were the conduit.

Florida outlawed alligator hunting in 1962, but poaching was still a livelihood in the swamps. Enforcement was tough. The plight of the reptiles garnered national attention, and when the Nixon administration put their finger to the wind of public opinion, it caught their attention, too.

The new interior secretary, an Alaskan car dealer named Walter Hickel, made an “on-the-spot investigation” into poaching a priority.

While on his Florida adventure in 1969, Hickel voyaged deep into the Ten Thousand Islands section of Everglades National Park with Gov. Kirk and others, and played “poacher” as rangers chased him by boat through the mangroves. Amid the camaraderie, Hickel promised to beef up alligator protection, and he and Kirk talked about the jetport.

In spring of 1969, Hickel was “determined not to lose a park to the roughshod behavior of another agency or department, local or federal, and they had powerful allies in Congress,” wrote Davis.

The Senate held hearings to reconcile the jetport conflict, and commissioned a study on how the jetport would impact Everglades National Park, which was downstream. Environmental impact studies are normal today, but it was a relatively new concept at the time.

At the June 1969 hearings on Capitol Hill, the study stated, “Development of the proposed jetport and its attendant facilities will lead to land drainage and development for agriculture, transportation, and services in the Big Cypress Swamp, which will inexorably destroy the south Florida ecosystem and thus the Everglades National Park.”

Boom. Committee members came out against the jetport, with scientific backing for their stance.

“Once that report came out … I think that was the major turning point,” Adams said. “Because that was pure science, peer-reviewed. It was irrefutable, and that’s when the Port Authority got nervous.”

Davis wrote that the deputy director of the Port Authority, Richard Judy, was defiant, though, stating that regardless of what the study reported, “We’re going to build the jetport.”

But then Gov. Kirk, relying heavily on Reed’s advice, decided against the jetport as well, recommending an alternative site in Palm Beach County. With nowhere to turn, the Port Authority relented.

Two years later, Big Cypress National Preserve was established and the larger Everglades system as we know it today was protected.

This was a period where the U.S. was essentially inventing environmental regulation as we know it. President Nixon, as ethically challenged as he was, signed the Endangered Species Act into law on Dec. 28, 1973. The jetport study became a model for federal requirements, according to Davis, and the newly formed Environmental Protection Agency started enforcing the equally new Clean Air Act.

“That was kind of the tail end of the development-at-any-cost mentality in Florida, coming off the post-war boom and the invention of air conditioning,” Jewett said.

“Much of the environmental protection of America came about in the 1960s and ’70s,” Jewett said. “It wasn’t easy. We had pitched political battles.”

The fight over the jetport was one of those battles, and it drastically altered what South Florida looks like today.

The fight today

While recently visiting the detention site, President Donald Trump raved about Alligator Alcatraz. Wilton Simpson, Florida’s agriculture commissioner, accompanied Trump on the tour and lavished him with praise, stating, “We are grateful for your leadership. … God had a plan for us, and it was Donald Trump.”

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has advised other states to follow Florida’s model. And the Florida GOP is so pleased with the site that they’ve got “Alligator Alcatraz” merchandise for sale online.

DeSantis has painted protests over Alligator Alcatraz as partisan nonsense, dismissing environmental concerns by saying there will be “zero” impact, and implying that those opposed are merely left-wingers using the Everglades “as a pretext just for the fact that they oppose immigration enforcement.”

Outdoorsman Mike Elfenbein would beg to differ. He’s the executive director for the Cypress Chapter of the Izaak Walton League and has been hunting deer and turkey, fishing, off-roading and camping in the Big Cypress for most of his life. He praised both Trump and DeSantis for their work on Everglades restoration, which is why the detention center makes no sense to him.

“I think it’s in a really bad place (for the detention center),” he said. “The Cypress chapter of the Izaak Walton League was created with the express purpose of advocating for the creation of Big Cypress National Preserve and not developing the jetport.

“The agreement back then in the ’70s was that that land was not going to be used or impacted beyond what had already happened, and it would be open for recreational use and for its ecological value … forever. This is contrary to that agreement.” Elfenbein said the center needs to be in a different place, and suggested Homestead Air Reserve Base.

“Alligator” Ron Bergeron, the colorful conservationist who sits on the board of the South Florida Water Management District and who once considered running for governor as a Republican, is also against the detention center.

His foundation released a statement that looked back to the jetport fight. “Our founder, Alligator Ron Bergeron, was one of the original Gladesmen in the 1970s who joined with Tribal leaders, conservationists, hunters, anglers, and scientists to fight the original jetport proposal and protect this sacred landscape.”

The Bergeron statement suggested alternative sites such as Camp Blanding or the Homestead Air Reserve Base. “These locations offer existing infrastructure, greater security, and far less ecological risk. Unlike the proposed site, these alternatives would not threaten imperiled wildlife … or directly impact the Miccosukee Tribe, who live on this land and depend on its health for their way of life.”

Elfenbein attended the first protest of the then-pending detention center. “There were all kinds of people there; there were hunters, there were sportsmen, there were MAGA guys, there were, you know, ultra-liberal folks. There was every walk of life.”

He said the upset over the detention center is much like what happened in the late ’60s and early ’70s. “People from all walks of life, from all political persuasions and cultural lineage and race and creed or color, everybody agreed on one thing, that this place was too important to destroy. … This (detention center) is the opposite of that.”

As for DeSantis’ idea that those opposed to the center are merely opposed to immigration enforcement, “I don’t agree with that,” Elfenbein said. “I would tell you this is not a left-wing or a right-wing (issue). This is every wing.”

On June 27, environmental groups, including Friends of the Everglades, the nonprofit founded by Marjory Stoneman Douglas during the fight to stop the original jetport, filed a federal lawsuit to halt activity at the site to allow time for an environmental impact study, something required by federal law.

“Lawsuits could slow it down or stop it,” said Jewett. “Whether they will is another story. It depends on which court it goes to. On the state level it seems unlikely. Ideologically they lean to DeSantis.”

Then there’s public opinion. “Public opinion is something that politicians still care about. If there was a big uprising in public opinion and it became more clear that a strong majority of Floridians, including a healthy percentage of Republicans, were against this, then maybe it would be rethought.”

Jewett said one example was the “state park fiasco” of 2025, in which a plan, backed by the DeSantis administration, to build golf courses and large hotels in state parks was leaked to the news media. Social media drove a bipartisan resistance so vocal that the plan blew up in the DeSantis administration’s face, and a bill, signed by DeSantis in May, was passed to make such developments illegal in state parks.

“Alligator Alcatraz is a travesty,” Adams said. “It’s going to do damage — if we have a major hurricane this summer, that thing is not going to stand there and all, with the sewage and chemicals. And they’re going to have to spray for mosquitoes, which is not allowed in the Big Cypress or the National Park.” (State officials have said structures at Alligator Alcatraz can withstand a hurricane of up to Category 2, and if an approaching storm were stronger, then the site would be evacuated.)

Davis’ research revealed that in a 1970 New York Times article about the end of the jetport saga, Buffalo Tiger said, “You can’t make it. You can’t buy it. And when it’s gone, it’s gone forever.”

Adams said he knows younger conservationists who are despondent over the current state of environmental fights: The Trump administration recently declared that the new purpose of the Environmental Protection Agency is to “lower the cost of buying a car, heating a home and running a business.” And the administration has worked to weaken the Clean Water Act and neuter the habitat protection powers of the Endangered Species Act.

Adams said his experience with the jetport taught him lessons. “Don’t let go,” he said. “Don’t stop. What’s worse, picking up the morning paper and seeing what the bastards are doing, and just complaining and bitching about it? Or getting involved? If we don’t, we’ll be overrun.”

Bill Kearney covers the environment, the outdoors and tropical weather. He can be reached at bkearney@sunsentinel.com. Follow him on Instagram @billkearney or on X @billkearney6. 

Normally, if things go well, they find Loki shacked up with a big fertile female during breeding season. The goal is to remove and euthanize as many of the invasive snakes as possible — taking out a female full of 70 or so egg follicles is like removing 71 snakes from the ecosystem.

As they got closer, they prepared to wrangle multiple big snakes, but when they finally spotted him, he was alone, motionless, and his neck and head were buried under pine needles.

They soon realized he was dead.

“It was like, ‘Whoa, whoa, stop. Don’t step on anything. Let’s look around,’” Bartoszek said. “We went into ‘CSI Crime Scene’ mode.”

“First off, it was a little emotional, because he was dead,” Bartoszek said. “This was one of my favorite scout snakes.”

Bartoszek and the team of biologists at the Conservancy of Southwest Florida have been tracking 40 or so male scout snakes since 2013. This breeding season they removed 130 adult snakes totaling 6,500 pounds. Nearly all of that success hinges on radio-tracking male scout snakes who lead them to big females in areas where a human would never spot them.

The Conservancy had been tracking Loki for six years, and he’d led them to some very rotund females. “He was a good scout,” Bartoszek said. “He was a good player. You never like to lose an MVP.”

When they brushed away the pine needles, Loki’s head and neck were gnawed off. There were no discernible tracks, and he was half-buried, something biologists call a cache.

“Caching is fairly specific to cats, and it looked like a cat cache. We were excited to find out if it was a panther or a bobcat,” Bartoszek said.

Previously, biologists have found several cached pythons in nearby Big Cypress National Preserve, but they had no proof of what kind of wild cat had killed them — the area is home to both bobcats and much larger, and endangered Florida panthers.

Bartoszek needed help to figure out what had happened. He called in former coworker and wild cat expert Dave Shindle, who now works for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as the coordinator for Florida panther recovery.

Shindle came to the cache site with a video trail cam, knowing that since the kill was fresh, the cat would likely be back. When he saw the snake’s carcass, he felt strongly that the killer was a cat — the gnawed neck was textbook feline caching behavior.

Pythons the size of Loki routinely eat bobcats (Bartoszek often finds bobcat remains in snakes’ digestive tracts during necropsies), and the Conservancy has documented a 15-foot snake swallowing a 77-pound deer, an animal three times the size of a bobcat.

Additionally, studies of bobcats on tree islands in the Everglades suggest that the more pythons there are in an area, the fewer bobcats use it, either because snakes eat them, or because there’s less prey for the cats due to competition from pythons.

It’s safe to say that pythons kill prey larger than themselves, but so do bobcats: They have been filmed tackling deer, especially young ones.

As Shindle set up the camera, the biologists started making bets on whether a bobcat or panther killed Loki. Bartoszek was betting a panther had done it. “It’s such a big python, I couldn’t really see a bobcat killing a 50-pound snake.” But panthers are exceedingly rare. They would soon find out who the killer was.

A predator, revealed

Shindle retrieved the camera the next day, and immediately spotted the killer on the video.

The grainy footage shows an approximately 25-pound bobcat gingerly walking across a log to return to its python stash. The cat seems nervous, cautious, constantly sniffing to pick up on the scent of the humans who’d been there the day before.

Bartoszek was impressed. “I like animals that punch above their weight class,” he said.

“That’s the last we saw of the bobcat. We just left the carcass there. Who knows if he came back.”

There’s no way to know with 100% certainty how Loki died. Maybe he drew his last breath before the cat found him. But bobcats are not known as scavengers. And Bartoszek had tracked and seen Loki a few days prior, and he was in top condition. “He was a prime specimen,” said Bartoszek. The conclusion: In all likelihood, a 25-pound bobcat killed a 13-foot, 52-pound python.

Leveraging the cold

A key factor in the snake’s demise, aside from the cat’s courage, may have been the cold weather.

Cold snaps, such as the one that occurred a few days before they found the snake, slow cold-blooded pythons down. They’re less able to flee, less able to defend themselves, they’re “off their game,” as Bartoszek put it. “I think he just got cold-stunned, and the cat was opportunistic and took him down,” Bartoszek said.

“This is a good sign for the Everglades that our native wildlife are fighting back,” he said. In fact bobcats may see pythons as a valuable food source if the conditions align. Successful predators put patterns together on how their prey behaves. It could be that this bobcat, and maybe others, have deduced that cold weather gives them an advantage over an otherwise deadly snake.

Bartoszek and his team have started to anticipate losing a scout snake each year during cold spells, maybe to a bobcat, maybe a panther, maybe a bear.

Earlier this year they were tracking an 11-foot, 35-pound snake named Pacino in the Picayune Strand State Forest after another cold snap. “We were out in the forest going, I wonder which of our animals could have got predated?” Sure enough, they found Pacino not only dead but almost entirely eaten.

The scene was messy — grass and ferns trampled. And there wasn’t much left of Pacino. “It was almost like a grenade went off and there was pretty much just the skull (of the snake),” said Bartoszek. Also, the site smelled like a bear.

“He looked like he was killed by a bear, but I can’t tell you 100% if he was. I don’t think he was killed by the cold, because we really didn’t get frost. I think it was a similar situation. He was exposed, and you could tell a bear got this python.”

Bartoszek sees a potential pattern emerging. “Animals are likely stunned, if you will, for lack of a better word, and a predator takes advantage. In fact, the native mammals might actively look for those vulnerabilities during a cold snap.”

Invasive Burmese pythons ended up in Florida wilderness via the exotic pet trade of the 1970s and ’80s. Escaped or released pets thrived and reproduced, first at the southern tip of the Everglades, but now as far north as Lake Okeechobee and the suburbs of Fort Myers. In some areas where the snakes are more established, mammal sightings are down 80% to 99%.

Bartoszek suspects that Florida panthers occasionally prey upon pythons, but there’s no proof yet. And there are only 200 or so Florida panthers in the wild. The fact that bobcats are widespread — the National Park Service said they have a “healthy population” in South Florida — and potentially learning to prey upon even large pythons is a good sign, Bartoszek said.

In warm weather, some bobcats have found other ways to put Burmese pythons on the menu.

Wildlife biologists in Florida documented a bobcat raiding a python nest back in 2021.

The cat returned several times when the massive 115-pound female mother snake was gone, snacking on eggs and caching the nest. When mamma came back, the cat actually faced off with her and took a swipe, but kept her distance as the snake coiled to strike.

The Conservancy loses approximately 10% of their 40 or so scout snakes each season, some to alligator predation, or sometimes the team will find the radio tracker with no snake. “We’ll never know what took them down,” said Bartoszek.

With the documentation of this bobcat cache, it looks like the tables can turn, at least once in a while. “As we have more (radio-tagged Burmese pythons) out there and we follow them longer-term, we see more of Florida native wildlife fighting back,” he said.

“Yeah, we were a little bummed that we lost a valuable scout. But we were also saying, ‘All right, score one for the home team.’”

Bill Kearney covers the environment, the outdoors and tropical weather. He can be reached at bkearney@sunsentinel.com. Follow him on Instagram @billkearney or on X @billkearney6. 

The seaweed, which often stinks of rotten eggs once it washes ashore, has not reached South Florida yet, but it’s currently drifting this way.

A mapping system devised by the University of South Florida Optical Oceanography Lab shows that sargassum levels for April in the eastern Caribbean and the adjacent Atlantic Ocean were 200% higher than their historical records for April.

The total amount when combining all regions, including the Gulf, was 150% higher than the historical record in April. All told, the coverage was 40% higher than the all-time high in June 2022.

Experts expect the floating seaweed mats to enter the Gulf of Mexico, and then drift on Gulf Stream currents to end up along South Florida beaches.

USF has been mapping the seaweed abundance since 2011.

Sargassum usually blooms from May to August, both locally and across the Atlantic. Ocean currents transport it closer to Florida as the spring progresses.

It’s unclear when the sargassum might reach South Florida en masse. Once it does, Barnes said the wind still has to push it ashore.

Though sargassum supports a food chain of marine life in the open ocean, once it decomposes on shore, it can release hydrogen sulfide, a gas that has an odor reminiscent of rotten eggs, and can cause respiratory problems.

The amount of the often-stinky seaweed that washes up on beaches has spiked tremendously in the last dozen years, bringing frustration to South Florida beachgoers and causing real economic damage in the Caribbean.

Sargarssum historically grew within the Sargasso Sea, an area surrounding Bermuda and reaching about halfway across the Atlantic. But around 2011, the blooms started to shift south, closer to the equator. This not only increased their size, but put them on a trajectory that swept them into the Gulf, and thus eventually onto South Florida beaches.

Barnes said researchers are looking into why sargassum abundance fluctuates. He said sea-surface temperatures can be too warm, so it’s not as simple as being closer to the equator. Upwellings from deep currents can fuel sargassum with nutrients, he said. Other researchers have suggested that heavy rain years in the Amazon Basin cause more nutrients to flow into the equatorial Atlantic, thus fueling the seaweed.

Parts of the Amazon region faced severe drought in 2024, and some areas are now recovering. But 2025 is expected to remain below normal.

Looking ahead: Researchers said May should see continued seaweed increases in most regions. “Sargassum inundation will continue to occur in most of the Caribbean nations and islands as well as along the southeast coast of Florida,” said the report.

The forecast does not assess October through the end of November. October is often an active storm month.

The analysis projects approximately 12 named storms through September. According to the National Hurricane Center, the average season between 1991 and 2020 had 10 storms through September, and 14 total.

The ECMRW, which produces weather predictions to member states and the European Union’s Space program, predicted five hurricanes through September. That’s average, according to the NHC.

Colorado State University Atlantic hurricane specialist Phil Klotzbach wrote on X that the forecast is probably influenced by two factors: neither La Niña nor El Niño will likely be at play. La Niña conditions tend to aid hurricane formation, while El Niño conditions tend to inhibit storms with wind shear.

Secondly, sea-surface temperatures in the equatorial Atlantic where hurricanes brew are forecast to be near normal. That’s in contrast to 2023 and 2024, which set records for hot water. Warm waters fuel hurricanes.

A 68-mph gust was recorded in Fort Myers Beach late Wednesday afternoon even as the storm’s top winds fell to 125 mph, dropping Milton to the status of a strong Category 3 storm. It is expected to hold that strength by the time its core reaches land.

Heavy rain, powerful winds and a series of tornadoes struck Florida from the storm’s leading edge, according to the National Hurricane Center’s 4 p.m. update.

The storm grew dramatically in size Wednesday afternoon, extending tropical-force winds up to 250 miles from its center as it neared the coast, according to the hurricane center’s 2 p.m. update. Tropical-force winds have speeds of 39-73 mph.

As dangerous winds from the hurricane approached the Gulf coast early Wednesday afternoon, the hurricane center advised residents to stay inside and keep away from windows. For coastal residents, there’s no time left to evacuate, forecasters said.

As the storm’s outer bands swept across the state, heavy rains hit the southwest coast and multiple tornadoes dropped across South Florida.

The storm’s forecast track shifted farther south of Tampa Bay, as Florida’s Gulf coast braced for a devastating blow late Wednesday night or early Thursday morning.

The storm’s winds dropped under assault from wind shear, the high-level crosswinds that can make it harder for hurricanes to retain power. The storm was expected to produce top winds of 125 mph, putting it at strong Category 3 strength, by the time it slams into the coast.

“We are bracing and are prepared to receive a major hit,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said. “We are facing this with the seriousness that it deserves but also with a determination that we will get through this.”

“While there is the hope that it will weaken more before landfall, there is high confidence that this hurricane is going to pack a major, major punch and do an awful lot of damage,” the governor said.

Heavy rains began falling on Florida’s Gulf coast and tornadoes touched down in western Broward County and other parts of South Florida late Wednesday morning, as the storm’s outer bands began sweeping across the state.

“We’re starting to see those impacts take shape across much of Florida, and conditions are going to deteriorate rapidly as we go through the next few hours,” said Mike Brennan, director of the National Hurricane Center.

The hurricane is expected to make landfall, defined as the point where the eye reaches shore, around midnight Wednesday or later.

“We’re still very concerned about the potential for a devastating storm surge across portions of the west coast of Florida from Anna Maria Island down to Boca Grande,” he said.

The Sun Sentinel has made its coverage of Hurricane Milton free to all readers as a public service. Please consider supporting important breaking news such as this by subscribing to SunSentinel.com at a special rate. 

The worst-hit areas, which at this point appear likely to run from Manatee through Charlotte counties, which means from north of Sarasota to just north of Fort Myers, could see catastrophic storm surges of 10 to 15 feet. Areas to the north, including Tampa Bay could see storm surges of eight to 12 feet.

Preparing for what’s certain to be a lengthy, difficult and dangerous aftermath, Florida has assembled about 50,000 electricity repair workers from across the United States and brought in an additional 500 law enforcement officers, DeSantis said.

Search-and-rescue teams are ready to deploy. The state has assembled dozens of aircraft, including helicopters and airplanes, as well as hundreds of high-wheeled vehicles. Emergency food and water kits have been made ready.

At 4 p.m. Wednesday, the hurricane was about 100 miles southwest of Tampa, moving northeast at 17 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center. Hurricane-force winds, meaning speeds of at least 74 mph, extended up to 35 miles from its center.

Millions of Floridians in the near-certain path Milton have just hours remaining to prepare for — or evacuate from — the monstrous storm, which is forecast to strike a devastating blow to the central Gulf coast, then carve a path of destruction to the opposite side of the state.

Milton is expected to come ashore within 40 miles north or south of Sarasota with the potential to be “one of the most destructive hurricanes on record” for Florida. The potential landfall zone includes Tampa Bay, home to more than 3.3 million people, which has not endured a direct hit from a hurricane in more than 100 years.

The weather on the west coast has already started to deteriorate ahead of the monstrous storm, which was packing wind speeds of 145 mph as of 11 a.m. Wednesday, when the storm was just 190 miles southwest of Tampa. Earlier Wednesday, Milton was a Category 5 hurricane with wind speeds of 160 mph.

The National Hurricane Center predicted Milton would likely continue to weaken in the hours before landfall, but it will be too late to spare the state from the storm’s catastrophic impacts. Forecasts call for Milton to be at least a Category 3 hurricane at landfall, and remain a hurricane during its entire path across the state.

Gov. Ron DeSantis said at a media briefing late Tuesday that the storm’s track could put several million Floridians at risk, compared to Hurricane Helene, which made landfall in the sparsely populated Big Bend region. “You start talking about the greater Tampa Bay area, that’s millions of people, and then if the storm rides I-4, out to the Atlantic, that’s many millions more.”

Even as Milton weakens, its wind field will grow considerably, hurricane center forecasters said, bringing a large area of tropical-storm force and hurricane-force winds, especially on the storm’s northwest side.

Making matters worse, tides on the Gulf coast will be incoming around the time of Milton’s landfall, exacerbating the storm surge, which could reach 12-15 feet in some spots. High tide peaks between 4 a.m. and 6 a.m. Thursday in the area around Sarasota and Tampa Bay.

“This is an unusual and extremely concerning forecast track for a hurricane approaching the west-central Florida coast and the Tampa Bay area,” warned AccuWeather Chief Meteorologist Jonathan Porter, “For many, Milton may be a once-in-a-lifetime hurricane in terms of severity.”

Thousands of fleeing cars clogged Florida’s highways ahead of the storm. Tampa Mayor Jane Castor noted that up to 15 feet of storm surge forecast for her city would be deep enough to swallow an entire house.

“So if you’re in it, basically that’s the coffin that you’re in,” Castor said.

Authorities issued mandatory evacuation orders across 11 Florida counties with a combined population of about 5.9 million people, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates.

Officials have warned that anyone staying behind must fend for themselves, as first responders are not expected to risk their lives attempting rescues at the height of the storm.

After weakening early Tuesday during an eyewall replacement in the Gulf of Mexico — something which typically happens in large hurricanes — Milton’s winds increased to 165 mph later in the day and were at 155 mph as of early Wednesday. On Monday, Milton had intensified at an astonishing rate with barometric pressure plunging below 900 millibars, making it one of the top five most intense Atlantic hurricanes on record.

A hurricane hunter aircraft reported early Tuesday evening the pressure in the eye of Milton was plunging yet again, indicating another explosive intensification. Colorado State University meteorologist Philip Klotzbach said in a post on X that the only other hurricane on record in the Atlantic with a lower pressure this late in the year was Hurricane Wilma in 2005.

The hurricane center issued a multitude of watches and warnings ahead of the storm.

State and local governments scrambled ahead of the storm to remove piles of debris left in Helene’s wake, fearing that the oncoming hurricane would turn loose wreckage into flying missiles. Gov. Ron DeSantis said the state deployed over 300 dump trucks that had removed 1,300 loads of debris.

Bands of heavy rain already moving ashore on Wednesday morning will likely hamper preparations.

In Riverview, south of Tampa, several drivers waiting in a long line for fuel Tuesday said they had no plans to evacuate.

“I think we’ll just hang, you know — tough it out,” said Martin Oakes, of nearby Apollo Beach. “We got shutters up. The house is all ready. So this is sort of the last piece of the puzzle.”

Others weren’t taking any chances after Helene.

On Anna Marie Island along the southern edge of Tampa Bay, Evan Purcell packed up his father’s ashes and was trying to catch his 9-year-old cat, McKenzie, as he prepared to leave Tuesday. Helene left him with thousands of dollars in damage when his home flooded. He feared Milton might take the rest.

“I’m still in shock over the first one and here comes round two,” Purcell said. “I just have a pit in my stomach about this one.”

At a briefing late Tuesday, DeSantis urged residents to follow the instructions of local officials. “I know some of our residents that just experienced hurricane damage from Hurricane Helene are fatigued,” DeSantis Said. “Just hang in there and do the right thing. Let’s get through this. We can do it together.”

Milton presents a worst-case scenario that hurricane experts have worried about for years.

A 2015 report from the Boston-based catastrophe modeling firm Karen Clark and Co. concluded that Tampa Bay is the most vulnerable place in the U.S. to storm surge flooding from a hurricane and stands to sustain $175 billion in damage.

The city is particularly vulnerable because of the Gulf of Mexico’s underwater topography. The Gulf’s gentle slope allows storms to push water long distances and far inland.

The state has prepared emergency fuel sources and electric vehicle charging stations along evacuation routes, and “identified every possible location that can possibly house someone along those routes,” the state’s director of emergency management, Kevin Guthrie said Tuesday. People who live in homes built after Florida strengthened its codes in 2004, who don’t depend on constant electricity and who aren’t in evacuation zones, should probably avoid the roads, he said.

DeSantis said crews were readying to mobilize for power restoration, and that Milton may cause outages greater than those brought by Hurricane Helene.

There is a “massive amount of resources being marshalled,” he added.

As many as 5,000 National Guard troops are helping state crews to remove the tons of debris left behind by Helene, DeSantis said, and he directed that Florida crews dispatched to North Carolina in Helene’s aftermath return to the state to prepare for Milton.

Milton is expected to bring rainfall totals of 6 to 12 inches, with localized areas seeing potentially up to 18 inches, across portions of central to northern Florida through Thursday. That will come on top of moisture ahead of the hurricane that is already saturating the state.

Information from the Associated Press was used in this report.

I’m on my hands and knees in the darkness, pushing through a thicket in the Everglades, when I hear in the distance the noise I’ve been waiting for: Otto’s bark. According to his owner, Mike Kimmel, aka the Python Cowboy, it means, “Get over here ASAP! I got me a python!”

I obey, shouldering my way through sharp bushes until I find a path. Kimmel has already made his way to the scene. “Decent snake!” he yells.

I still can’t see the python, but Otto is yipping, darting and pointing to something under a carpet of ferns.

“Get over here, y’all,” Kimmel yells to his clients, brother and sister Marshall Willey and Macee Cahill. They’ve hired Kimmel and Otto to add some adventure to their lives — though they’ve hunted deer and hogs back home in east Texas, they’ve never seen, let alone grabbed an invasive Burmese python.

To help ensure they get a shot at a snake, Kimmel relies on Otto, a 5-year-old German wirehaired pointer. Otto just might be the best — if not the handsomest — python hunter in the world. And he comes with a very unique skill set.

Beyond roads

We’d rendezvoused a few hours earlier at the boat ramp at Everglades Holiday Park, where the Everglades abuts Broward County’s western suburbs. As the sun sets, Kimmel, lanky and mellow, and sunburnt from his day job as a contracted iguana hunter, preps his hunting boat.

Otto comes over to say hello. He’s got distinctive eyebrows, inquisitive brown eyes and a regal beard. Pet him and you feel no fat, just wiry hair, muscle, and a surprisingly solid head. “People are so used to fat dogs, they see an athletic dog with some ribs showing they think they’re malnourished,” says Kimmel.

With that he and his assistant, Jarrod Buzbee, invite Willey, Cahill and me aboard and we head out along a canal system that penetrates deep into Everglades and Francis S. Taylor Wildlife Management Area, part of the larger Everglades ecosystem.

As we speed farther away from civilization, Kimmel sets a soundtrack of country music. Bugs flash through the spotlight like a snow flurry. Otto stops by for a back rub.

Kimmel explains that most python hunting in Florida is done by road cruising, which entails driving for hours along back roads at night with powerful spotlights to find nearly invisible snakes. It can be thrilling, but is maddeningly inefficient — the Everglades is nearly void of roads. It also relies on flawed human eyesight, not the profound smelling abilities and prey drive of a good hunting dog.

Kimmel’s boat, and Otto, allow him to go beyond roads and find snakes where no one else is looking. He travels deep into roadless areas via the canal system and hops out on limestone spoil islands that were created when crews dug the canals decades ago. It’s prime invasive python habitat.

He then lets Otto loose, where his personality and talents take over. The talent is in his nose. The personality means prey drive, a need for teamwork, and a certain open mindedness — Kimmel says few dogs are willing to target pythons. If Otto smells a snake, he’ll point. And if he sees one, he’ll bark. Then Kimmel or the clients catch the python and remove it from the ecosystem.

Burmese pythons were brought to Florida via the exotic pet trade in the 1970s and ’80s. Sometimes they escaped. Sometimes they were dumped. A large number — it’s unclear how many — slithered into the South Florida wilderness when a breeding facility in Homestead was damaged during Hurricane Andrew in 1992. Since then they’ve flourished to deadly effect. In some areas of the Everglades, mammal sightings have dropped by 98% since the snakes arrived.

And there’s no way to stop the invasion, which is moving northward, and has reached the suburbs of Fort Myers. Wildlife officials do hope to slow it, however, with paid contract hunters and with events such as the Python Challenge.

“To me it’s a lot more effective for what we’re trying to get done if I’m out here where the pythons are eating our native wildlife, where they’re reproducing, where they’re laying nests, rather than just along the road,” says Kimmel.

In other words, he’s reaching pythons that few other hunters can access.

“We’re finding the pythons that are hard to find, and finding the nests, and finding the breeding balls. We’re finding the pythons where they’re actively hunting the native wildlife, in their habitat.”

‘I got bit’

Kimmel beaches the boat on a spoil island and Buzbee ties it to a tree. Otto’s runs to the bow, his stub rapidly ticking. “He knows what we’re about to go do,” says Kimmel.

He gives us instructions before we hop to the ground: “I would advise you to spread out. Let’s cover as much ground as we can. Take your time. Watch where you’re steppin’. This is the time of year we start to see a lot of water moccasins, especially on these stormier weeks.”

“Generally pythons are just gonna lay there. They’re not gonna run when they see you. They’re gonna rely on their camouflage. If you see one just stop, yell out. Let everyone know what’s going on. We’ll do our best to get to you. Keep your eye on it. If it starts to get away, dive on it, do whatever you can to stop it. Sound good?”

I’m not sure it sounds good, but we each walk our separate ways into the darkness. Every step through the waist-deep brush feels like a question — what’s there? What’s touching my face?

When road cruising, you still feel a physical connection to civilization — if need be, the road beneath you will lead you out somewhere, to Naples or the Turnpike. Out here, with dirt and ferns underfoot, frog noises near and far, and only a vague sense of Fort Lauderdale’s light pollution to the east, you’re basically walking through the blackness of a jungle at night.

Otto isn’t walking — he rampages through the undergrowth, nose to the ground, with one thing in mind. This is his domain.

Otto works out in front of Kimmel, disappearing, bushwhacking and returning. He’s assessing what’s been there, and what might be hidden, invisible. Kimmel says he doesn’t bother with native snakes, such as the venomous cottonmouths. “He’s not real impressed with native snakes. … He’s not real interested in ’em.”

I hear something rustling in the tiny leaves. Snake? Seems like it, I tell Kimmel. “Dragonfly,” he says. I cautiously peer down with my headlamp and find out he’s right.

Kimmel was born and raised in Martin County, but grew up, in part, on a sailboat. When he was 8, he and his family sailed from Florida to South America and up through the Caribbean. They were homeschooled on the boat and returned to Florida when he was a teen.

He “got into reptiles a bunch” and eventually became a contracted python hunter with the state for five or six years. But he switched to guiding and selling python leather products. “That allows me a lot more freedom to use my dogs,” he says.

Later, Kimmel calls out in the distance. Otto’s pointing on a hatchling python. As I rush over I ruin a perfectly good spiderweb with my face.

By the time I get there, Macee Cahill’s reaching into a low tree to grab it. As she does, the snake wrangles around and bites her.

“Oh, that’s a bite,” she says with admirable nonchalance.

Kimmel bags the snake and everyone praises both Otto and Cahill. But we’re after bigger prey.

Onward

We hop back in the boat and head farther into the Everglades. Now we all know the drill, and it takes about 15 minutes to comb through the underbrush of each island.

The third island feels a little different. There is a meadow, then a forested area carpeted with knee-high ferns. As I trail Kimmel and Otto he tells me he first hatched the idea of using German wirehaired pointers while watching his wife, who’s a professional bird hunting guide, work with the breed in the field. He was impressed by their grit and versatility, and wanted a dog that could handle the rigors of an iguana hunt.

He started taking Otto on golf-course, iguana-removal jobs when he was about six months old. Iguana skin is like leather and the spikes on their spine are hard and sharp. “For iguanas, it’s pretty much the same as birds,” says Kimmel. “It’s retrieving.”

“The only difference with the iguanas is we want a grittier dog like the wire-haired, because these iguanas, they fight back. They gotta be really athletic dogs, they can’t be scared.”

Jeff Jalbert, of Top Shelf Kennels in North Dakota, has hunted upland birds with German shorthaired pointers since 1989, and is now a breeder and judge that puts dogs through field trials that test hunting skills. He thinks it’s outstanding that Kimmel is using Otto on iguanas and pythons.

“The dog was bred to do anything,” said Jalbert. He explained that wealthy folks in Germany in the 1800s had a separate dog for each task — pointing, retrieving, blood tracking. “But the German wirehaired pointer is truly the poor man’s dog, where one guy could only feed one dog, and needed him to do everything, whether that’s go grab a duck out of the pond or protect the family from strangers.”

“I love the breed because they’re extremely hardy,” he said. “They’re in my opinion the most versatile breed. I live up in the tundra here of North Dakota, and we hunt in extreme conditions. It could be 10, 15, 20 below zero, and we’re still pheasant hunting, and our dogs will get out and thrive in that environment, and you go down to Florida and you see Otto, and it’s 100 degrees, and he’s out chasing lizards around,” he says.

A dog vigorous enough to do all that is not a layabout, he warns. “They’re not a dog that does well left idle. They’re physical specimens. You need to keep them exercised, you need to keep their body and their mind busy, they just thrive on having work to do.”

Before Otto, Kimmel, who also has a team of hog hunting dogs, experimented with using other breeds for pythons.

“They just didn’t want anything to do with the snakes,” says Kimmel. Even his best hog hunting dog, Moose, wasn’t a fit. “He showed me he kinda didn’t like it too much,” says Kimmel. “You can tell by his body language — not moving quick enough, going back to the boat, instead hunting the other side of the island, just little things like that. When you know your dog good enough, I mean, he literally speaks to you.” Based on tonight, Otto’s body language says, “Let’s go.”

There’s a lot of debate as to when humans domesticated dogs. Some researchers say 20,000 to 30,000 years ago. As for teaming up to hunt, rock art in what is now Jordan suggests dogs helped people corral gazelles into traps some 14,000 years ago. The synergy makes sense. Both species evolved as social predators who needed teamwork to survive. As Kimmel and Otto move through the underbrush of the Everglades, they both want the same thing, and use different skills to help each other.

This past spring was Otto’s first python nesting season. Kimmel says he found just over 20 nests. Average clutches are between 20 and 60 eggs, so if the numbers are accurate, Otto eliminated between 400 and 1,200 potential pythons from South Florida wilderness this spring.

“That alone shows how important the dogs are,” says Kimmel.

The most bountiful nest that Otto and Kimmel found this year was in a wildlife management area just west of Broward County. It had a nearly 17-foot mamma sitting on top of it with 76 eggs.

Kimmel and I split up to comb the island. Spider eyes shine like drew drops in the meadow. I see Buzbee’s, Willey’s and Cahill’s flashlights roaming beyond a thicket. I’ll have to crawl through on hands and knees to reach them. It’s then that I hear Otto go crazy.

We all race to him. As mentioned, Kimmel beats me to the snake. All I can see is the carpet of ferns, and Otto contemplating taking a nip. The ferns are disconcerting, a veil with a world underneath.

Kimmel praises Otto, then pries the veil open and there it is, thick as a slab of bologna, slowly moving away.

Willey and Cahill arrive and know it’s a bigger snake.

“I woulda had a tough time finding this thing without him, y’all,” says Kimmel.

Willey eases in and grabs the snake’s tail and raises it up, but where’s the head? After a few frantic moments of not knowing where a strike could come from, he spots it and grabs it without hesitation.

“There ya go!” yells Kimmel. Willey hoists the snake into the air. “If you don’t have a dog, hunting out here is tough,” says Kimmel. After pictures and high-fives, and more praise for both Otto and Willey, we bag the snake and board the boat. Otto’s tail is still ticking away.

It’s 1 a.m. We call it a night and head to the dock. Otto procures a head rub from Cahill on the way in. “He’s awesome,” she says. “You can tell he loves his job.”

“When it comes to using dogs in the woods — just like man has for thousands of years, truthfully — I love the hunt,” says Buzbee. “But it’s more of watching those animals do what they love doing. To be able to still come down here and do this with Otto in a spot that will never be touched, it’s a gift,” he says.

As we say our goodbyes at the dock, Otto runs across the parking lot and starts sniffing, looking for scents along the rim of wild grass. He’s not done. Kimmel calls him back and he’s at our sides in an instant, his stub tail still ticking fast and constant, as if releasing steam from some massive well of excitement, a well maybe older than Otto, older than the Everglades.

Bill Kearney covers the environment, the outdoors and tropical weather. He can be reached at bkearney@sunsentinel.com. Follow him on Instagram @billkearney or on X @billkearney6.

The Cayman Islands and Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula are in Beryl’s path later in the week, and the southern Gulf coast of Texas, including Corpus Christi, was in Beryl’s forecast cone of uncertainty for late in the weekend.

Hurricane Beryl could bring life-threatening storm surge from six to nine feet, flash flooding and mudslides to Jamaica and Haiti, and officials are warning residents to take shelter or evacuate the most prone areas.

As of 2 p.m. Wednesday, Beryl was 45 miles south of Kingston, Jamaica, paralleling the southern coast of the island, with maximum sustained winds of 140 mph. The hurricane is traveling west-northwest at 18 mph.

Hurricane-force winds extend outward up to 45 miles from the center and tropical-storm-force winds extend outward up to 185 miles.

After passing Jamaica, Hurricane Beryl will track near or over the Cayman Islands on Wednesday night or early Thursday before approaching the Yucatan Peninsula just south of Tulum and Cancun as a weaker hurricane on Thursday night.

Mexico has issued a hurricane warning for the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula from Puerto Costa Maya near the Belize border north to Cancun.

A tropical storm watch is in effect for the coast of Belize from south of Chetumal to Belize City.

Forecasters said Beryl will weaken over the Yucatan but could regain hurricane strength as it moves back over water in the Bay of Campeche and then the Gulf of Mexico. The southern half of Texas’ Gulf Coast was in the forecast cone of uncertainty as of Wednesday morning.

“We are most concerned about Jamaica, where we are expecting the core of a major hurricane to pass near or over the island,” National Hurricane Center Director Michael Brennan said in an online briefing Tuesday. “You want to be in a safe place where you can ride out the storm … Be prepared to stay in that location through Wednesday.”

Even if the eye of the storm doesn’t make landfall on Jamaica, the island will take a blow from the upper right quadrant, the strongest and most devastating part of a hurricane.

“I am encouraging all Jamaicans to take the hurricane as a serious threat,” Prime Minister Andrew Holness said in a public address late Monday. “It is, however, not a time to panic.”

The Cayman Islands could see between 2 and 4 feet of storm surge. Though Haiti and the Dominican Republic are not in the direct path of Beryl, the hurricane is close enough to bring a potential storm surge of 1 to 3 feet along the southern coasts, the hurricane center said.

Record-breaking storm

Late Monday, Beryl became the earliest storm to develop into a Category 5 hurricane in the Atlantic and peaked at winds of 165 mph Tuesday before weakening to a still-destructive Category 4. It was the first Category 4 storm to occur in June and the earliest Category 4 on record in the Atlantic Basin.

The storm strengthened from a tropical depression to a major hurricane in just 42 hours, which only six other Atlantic hurricanes have done, and never before September, according to hurricane expert Sam Lillo.

Beryl made landfall Monday in the Grenadine Islands north of Grenada as a powerful Category 4 storm with sustained winds of 155 mph, just shy of the minimum Category 5 threshold of 157 mph.

At least six people have died.

Three people were reported killed in Grenada and Carriacou and another in St. Vincent and the Grenadines, officials said. Two other deaths were reported in northern Venezuela, where five people were missing, officials said. Some 25,000 people in that area also were affected by heavy rainfall from Beryl.

One fatality in Grenada occurred after a tree fell on a house, Kerryne James, minister of climate resilience, environment and renewable energy, told The Associated Press.

“The situation is grim,” Grenadian Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell told a news conference Tuesday. “There is no power, and there is almost complete destruction of homes and buildings on the island. The roads are not passable, and in many instances they are cut off because of the large quantity of debris strewn all over the streets.”

Mitchell added: “The possibility that there may be more fatalities remains a grim reality as movement is still highly restricted.”

Grand Cayman, Little Cayman and Cayman Brac were under a hurricane warning Wednesday.

Forecasters said Tuesday night that Beryl is expected to weaken in the next few days but will remain a hurricane in the northwestern Caribbean.

Next storm being tracked

The National Hurricane Center is also keeping an eye on a tropical wave, located a couple hundred miles east-southeast of the Windward Islands in the Atlantic on Monday, which could become a tropical depression by midweek as it moves across the western Atlantic and eastern Caribbean.

As of 8 a.m. Wednedsay, forecasters gave it a 10% chance of developing in the next two days and a 20% chance over the next week. It is expected to move west at 15 mph to 20 mph, forecasters said.

If it develops, it would be named Debby and follow a very similar path as Hurricane Beryl into the Caribbean Sea.

The western Gulf of Mexico generated the 2024 season’s first tropical storm last week. Dubbed Alberto, the system made landfall in Mexico 250 miles south of the U.S. border, but sent storm surge and flood to spots 500 miles away in Louisiana.

Information from The Associated Press was used to supplement this news article.

“Life-threatening” winds and potentially 5 to 8 feet of storm surge are forecast to strike Jamaica on Wednesday, despite some potential weakening during the day Tuesday. It will likely remain a major hurricane as it takes a track over or just south of Jamaica.

Beryl is forecast to bring 4 to 8 inches to Jamaica on Wednesday, with up to 1 foot in some areas.

Haiti and the Dominican Republic are not in the direct path of Beryl, but is close enough to bring a potential storm surge of 2 to 4 feet along the southern coasts, the hurricane center said. Tropical storm conditions are forecast to arrive in Haiti and the Dominican Republic on Tuesday, while the Cayman Islands will experience hurricane conditions.

Southern areas of Haiti and the Dominican Republic will be affected by Beryl’s outer bands Tuesday into Wednesday, with 2 to 6 inches of rain possible.

Over the weekend, Beryl became the strongest June hurricane on record, with maximum sustained winds of 140 mph. It was the first Category 4 storm to occur in June and the earliest Category 4 on record in the Atlantic Basin. On Sunday, Beryl rapidly intensified from a tropical storm to a major hurricane in just 42 hours.

Beryl made landfall Monday in the Grenadine Islands north of Grenada as a powerful Category 4 storm with sustained winds of 155 mph, just shy of the minimum Category 5 threshold of 157 mph.

As of 11 a.m. Tuesday, Beryl was about 235 miles southeast of Isla Beata in the Dominican Republic and 555 miles east-southeast of Kingston, Jamaica. The hurricane is traveling west-northwest at 22 mph.

Hurricane-force winds extend outward up to 40 miles from the center and tropical-storm-force winds extend outward up to 175 miles.

All of Jamaica and parts of Mexico and Belize were within Beryl’s cone Tuesday.

Grand Cayman, Little Cayman and Cayman Brac were under a hurricane watch Tuesday.

A tropical storm warning is in effect for the Dominican Republic from Punta Palenque west to the border with Haiti. A hurricane watch is now in effect for the south coast of Haiti from the border with the Dominican Republic to Anse d’Hainault.

Beryl is not expected to affect South Florida.

It should reach Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula by Friday. Once the storm crosses the Yucatan and is over water once again, it will be weaker, but its potential path broadens, and could include Southern Texas.

Forecasters also said that a tropical wave, located about 1,000 miles east of the Windward Islands in the Atlantic on Monday, could become a tropical depression by midweek as it moves toward the eastern and central Caribbean.

It has a 20% chance of developing in the next two days, while forecasters have reduced its chance of developing in the next seven days to 30%.

It is expected to move west at 15 mph to 20 mph, forecasters said.

The next storm to form would be Debby.

The western Gulf of Mexico generated the 2024 season’s first tropical storm last week. Dubbed Alberto, the system made landfall in Mexico 250 miles south of the U.S. border, but sent storm surge and flood to spots 500 miles away in Louisiana.

The 2024 hurricane season, which officially began June 1, is expected to be extremely active.

In its annual May outlook, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said that the 2024 hurricane season has an 85% chance of being above normal, with 17 to 25 named storms with minimum sustained winds of 39 mph, and eight to 13 hurricanes. An average year has 14 named storms and seven hurricanes.

In addition, NOAA has forecast four to seven major hurricanes for 2024, meaning those that are Category 3 or above.

Experts at Colorado State University stated in their 2024 forecast that the U.S. East Coast, including Florida, had a 34% chance of a major hurricane making landfall this year. The average from 1880-2020 was 21%.

Forecasters say that the record-warm water temperatures that now cover much of the Atlantic Ocean will continue into peak hurricane season from August to October. That warm water fuels hurricanes. By early June, the tropical Atlantic was already as hot as it usually is in mid-August — peak hurricane season.

Hurricane season officially ends Nov. 30.

These numbers are the “highest ever” that NOAA has issued for its May outlook.

NOAA is calling for:

— 17 to 25 named storms with minimum sustained winds of 39 mph. The average is 14.

— Eight to 13 hurricanes with sustained wind speeds of at least 74 mph. The average year has seven.

— Four to seven major hurricanes with sustained winds over 111 mph. The average is three.

Many hurricanes never make landfall. Of the seven Atlantic hurricanes in 2023, only one, Idalia, made landfall in the U.S.

“Of note, the forecast for named storms, hurricanes and major hurricanes is the highest that NOAA has ever issued for the May outlook,” NOAA Administrator Richard Spinrad said.

Forecasters say that the record-warm water temperatures that now cover much of the Atlantic Ocean will continue into peak hurricane season from August to October. That warm water fuels hurricanes.

Forecasters also said there’s a 77% chance of La Niña forming from August through October, which will reduce wind shear, particularly in the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean Basin. Wind shear can topple even the strongest storms.

Ken Graham, director of the National Weather Service, said a theme for this year was that risk is “about the impact, not the category.”

He said that when the NWS looked at 2013-2023 hurricane fatalities they found that 90% result from water. A significant amount of those were from people drowning in their automobiles, said Graham, and storm surge caused 41 fatalities during Hurricane Ian.

Graham also warned about how quickly storms can strengthen. “Every Category 5 storm that made landfall in the last 100 years was a tropical storm or less three days prior.”

Hurricane Idalia, which pummeled Florida’s Big Bend region last September, jumped from a tropical storm with winds of 70 mph to an enraged Category 4 hurricane with wind speeds of 130 mph in a period of just over 24 hours. The storm took just 12 hours to ramp from Category 1 to Category 3. And once the system became a hurricane, it only took a day for it to race across the Gulf of Mexico and make landfall about 55 miles north of Cedar Key.

The National Hurricane Center dubs any storm that gains 35 mph or more of maximum sustained wind speed in a 24-hour period as “rapidly intensifying.” Idalia gained 50 mph in that timeframe.

Graham said “all of the ingredients are definitely in place for us to have an active season. What goes into this forecast? It’s all coming together — you combine factors to get a forecast like this. You have warm energy in the oceans. You have an active African Monsoon. We don’t expect a whole lot of shear. … It takes all these ingredients to come up with a forecast like this.”

The infected dolphin was trapped between a dock and a seawall in the Big Bend region in March 2022. By the time wildlife officials arrived, it had died. They later found that it was infected with bird flu. The discovery — the first known case of a dolphin contracting bird flu in U.S. waters — sent a jolt of concern through wildlife officials.

Bird flu is highly contagious and deadly to many animals. If the virus, which can wipe out swaths of both bird and mammal populations, were to spread among dolphins, whales and manatees, it could be “catastrophic for these populations,” a recent paper published by the University of Florida and other institutions said.

Now, the new paper is bringing some clarity, offering clues as to how the dolphin may have contracted the virus. To better understand the virus and suss out how the dolphin may have contracted it, the UF team sent tissue samples to an enhanced laboratory at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, Memphis, Tennessee.

“We wanted to find out, OK, why would this dolphin come down with this?” said Michael Walsh, a veterinarian working with the aquatic animal health program at the University of Florida, and one of the authors on the study.

Here’s a look at what they found.

Examining the dolphin

Biologists were stumped with what they discovered inside the skull of a young male bottlenose dolphin that had died. When University of Florida veterinarians later performed a necropsy, they found inflammation of the dolphin’s brain and meninges (membranes that enclose the brain and spinal cord).

The inflammation stemmed from a highly pathogenic variant of bird flu. It was the first known case of bird flu in dolphins in U.S. waters, and only the second known diagnosis in the world.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the virus and its variants can cripple the poultry industry and fuel widespread mortality in wild birds, especially raptors such as eagles, owls, and vultures that might scavenge or prey upon infected animals.

The disease also can jump to mammals, either through the respiratory system, or when carnivorous such as foxes or mink eat infected birds.

Dolphins barely interact with birds. What wildlife officials didn’t know when they retrieved the dolphin in Big Bend, was that bird flu was rapidly spreading globally, and had hit the Gulf Coast.

“We had no idea there were birds dying on the coast when we picked up the dolphin,” Walsh said. He and his team later worked with bird researchers to connect the dots.

At the time of the dolphin’s death in March 2022, the virus was new to North America. The first bird flu detected occurred on a farm in Newfoundland, Canada, in December 2021, according to the New York Times.

Since then, it has spread aggressively. By January 2022, the virus was detected in wild birds in the Carolinas.

The Big Bend dolphin died in March, and that summer, the virus had jumped to mammals elsewhere, killing hundreds of gray and harbor seals along the coast of Maine. Was the Florida infection connected to a larger, possibly deadly outbreak?

After the UF team sent tissue samples to a lab, genetic analysis there showed that the dolphin’s bird flu strain was the same strain that was circulated along the Atlantic and Mississippi flyways — the routes that migratory birds take — during the spring of 2022. The Atlantic flyway passes over the area where the dolphin died.

The study then compared the dolphin’s strain to the variant responsible for the outbreak in seals in the Northeast and found them to be different. Also, genome sequencing revealed that the dolphin’s virus lacked markers normally associated with mammals passing on the virus.

In other words, the infection had not traveled down the east coast among mammals — a good sign.

What about local birds?

There were coastal bird die-offs from bird flu along the Big Bend area, but genetic testing revealed they were driven by a different strain of the virus.

A bird migrating along the Atlantic flyway might have been the source of the dolphins infection. But how? Dolphins don’t eat birds.

Walsh theorizes that the dolphin may have played with an infected bird.

“He was a young male. And it’s quite possible when they’re bored they’re playing, they’re investigating things. He may have come upon a bird that was sick and carrying the virus,” Walsh said.

“He probably mouthed it. They wouldn’t tend to eat it. But they might push it around and play with it. He may have been exposed to feces. Those things could have caused transfer.” Walsh also said that if the bird was still breathing, the virus could have entered the dolphin’s blow hole.

Global spread and human risk

Since 2022, the virus has continued to spread in North, Central and South America, in both birds and mammals.

Last year, the virus killed 24,000 sea lions along the coast of Chile and Peru before spreading south the the Antarctic region where it is now infecting elephant seals.

The virus can make people sick.

There have only been two cases of humans contracting the virus in the U.S.

In 2022, a person with direct exposure to poultry being culled for the disease tested positive. They had fatigue for a few days and recovered.

The most recent case occurred in Texas in April, when a person working with cattle that were presumed to be infected tested positive. Their only symptom was conjunctivitis.

Symptoms can range from mild (eye infection, upper respiratory symptoms) to severe illness (pneumonia).

Bird flu-related deaths have occurred in other countries.

According to the CDC, “people with close or prolonged, unprotected exposures to infected birds or other animals (including livestock), or to environments contaminated by infected birds or other animals, are at greater risk of infection.”

The CDC says the health risk to humans is relatively low because human-to-human transmission isn’t sustainable for the virus.

Is there still a risk to Florida marine mammals?

No other bird flu has been detected in Florida waters in either dolphins or manatees since the young male dolphin’s death, so he appears to have been a one-off, a victim of his own curiosity.

But the report emphasized that there seems to be no end in sight to the global spread of bird flu, and there is still much that is unknown about how the virus may evolve and affect marine mammals in the future.

Walsh said that wildlife officials have a better understanding now of how the virus made its way to a Florida mammal, and “we’ll have all this in the bank if something else happens.”

“We were all very concerned by where this could have gone,” he said. “And very fortunate it didn’t give us a long-term die-off in our area.”

Bill Kearney covers the environment, the outdoors and tropical weather. He can be reached at bkearney@sunsentinel.com. Follow him on Instagram @billkearney or on X @billkearney6.