Hurricane 2008

As Southwest Florida braced for the cold, windy weather expected early this morning, Collier County shelters prepared for additional patrons. St. Matthew’s House, already full and over capacity with 106 people, took in about a dozen people shortly before 8 p.m. The shelter could take an estimated 40 people in for the cold weather, said John Bianco, program staff manager. He couldn’t predict how many additional homeless people would seek shelter for the night. Full story »

Bobby Young is back home, finally. Two months after he packed his furniture into a moving truck and escaped to his grandmother’s house, he’s back in his living room, chain-smoking cigarettes on a plaid sofa and watching “Unsolved Mysteries” on TV. Since the flood, little else remains in this single-story home on Saunders Avenue in east Bonita Springs. The refrigerator didn’t survive (a cooler now suffices) and behind two scavenged sofas, purple curtains filter the only light entering the room. Young, unemployed for the past eight months, can’t afford other furnishings. Full story »

Forecasters say conditions in South Florida are favorable to spark wildfires. Full story »

Anyone in Collier County who suffered damages or losses from Tropical Storm Fay must register for state/federal insurance by the end of Monday. Full story »

Crashing waves and a powerful sea surge from Hurricane Paloma destroyed hundreds of homes along Cuba's southern coast, but the storm rapidly weakened into a tropical depression Sunday as it moved over the island. Full story »

Paloma became an "extremely dangerous" Category 4 hurricane early Saturday, bringing wind and rain to the Cayman Islands and threatening to strike hurricane-ravaged Cuba as a major storm, forecasters said. Full story »

Sometimes “singing for your supper” isn’t just a quaint turn of phrase. Sometimes it means a whole lot more. Displaced from their homes in Bonita Springs’ Manna Christian RV Park by the residual effects of Tropical Storm Fay in August, dozens of children who belong to New Horizons of Southwest Florida’s “Super Kids Club” will participate in a free benefit concert at 4:30 p.m. Sunday at North Naples United Methodist Church, where they’ll be accompanied by world-famous opera singer and Naples resident Steffanie Pearce. Full story »

Forecasters say Tropical Storm Paloma is strengthening and turning to the north as it approaches the Cayman Islands and Cuba. Full story »

An appraisal by Lee County pegs the value of the Manna Christian Missions RV Park at $2 million. That’s if the county chose to make an offer. The recommendation from the Division of County Lands is to pass. The appraisal, by Michael Maxwell of Maxwell & Hendry, gives no value at all to the mobile homes and other improvements on the 20-acre property that was ravaged by flooding during Tropical Storm Fay in August. Full story »

It may actually feel as if it is fall this week in Southwest Florida. According to the National Weather Service, the coldest air of the season was slated to sweep through the area Monday night and last through Wednesday — with the week’s lowest forecasted temperature of 46 degrees expected for tonight. Full story »

A fire weather watch is in effect for Collier County on Tuesday from noon to 6 p.m., the National Weather Service reports. Full story »

Fire officials want people to be prepared for the upcoming dry season and a cold snap expected this week that is predicted to drop temperatures into the 50s. “We’re just coming off one of the wettest rainy seasons we’ve had in a long time,” said Hank Graham, center manager for the Florida Division of Forestry’s Caloosahatchee Forestry Center that serves Lee, Collier and Hendry counties. Full story »

Three years ago Friday Hurricane Wilma’s 125 mph winds whipped Immokalee. Some residents of the farming community 40 miles northeast of Naples are still waiting on relief. “Floridians knew that recovering from the third costliest storm in our nation’s history would not happen overnight,” Jim Homstad, a Federal Emergency Management Agency spokesman at the agency’s Florida office, wrote in an e-mail. “FEMA has made incredible progress.” Full story »

Things are slowly returning to normal at Estero Community Park and Recreation Center. For seven weeks, the center served as a shelter for about 500 people after Tropical Storm Fay rains inundated two Bonita Springs mobile home parks in August. Normal programming at the center is expected to get back underway Nov. 1, said Irma Reyez, the center’s supervisor. Full story »

Forecasters say Omar has reached hurricane strength with top winds of 75 mph as it menaces Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Full story »