The National Weather Service office in Miami is tracking a thunderstorm capable of producing a funnel cloud near Ave Maria, moving south at 10 mph across north central Collier and southwestern Hendry, and its statement runs to 7.45 p.m. Wednesday
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The National Weather Service office in Miami is watching a thunderstorm over inland Collier County that it says is capable of producing a funnel cloud. The statement went out at 7.07 p.m. Wednesday and expires at 7.45 p.m.
At 7.07 p.m. the storm was near Ave Maria and moving south at 10 mph. The office puts two hazards on it, funnel clouds and wind gusts of 45 to 50 mph, both radar indicated rather than measured by an instrument on the ground. It rates the statement Moderate and covers Hendry along with north central Collier.
The places it names are Ave Maria, Immokalee, Golden Gate Estates, Big Corkscrew Island, Orangetree, Miles City, Sunniland, Bunker Hill, Lake Trafford, and the intersection of Interstate 75 and Everglades Boulevard.
Two instructions come with it, and the second is the one that separates this statement from the run of summer wind advisories over the same country. The first is the familiar line that these winds can bring down small limbs and branches and blow around unsecured small objects, with a direction to seek shelter in a safe building until the storm passes. The second reads that funnel clouds occasionally touch down and produce tornadoes or waterspouts, and directs people to move indoors and stay away from windows. Neither of the two comparable statements this desk carried in the past week, over Lee and Charlotte on August 10 and over Lee on August 5, carried that second element.
It is still a statement and not a warning. No tornado warning was in effect for Collier or Hendry when the alert feed was read shortly after 7.15 p.m., and a funnel cloud aloft is not a touchdown.
Nothing on the ground has given way yet. Collier County was showing 223 customers without power against 283,212 tracked, and Lee 180 against 535,504, on outage pages that had refreshed three minutes before the reading. The Florida Highway Patrol dispatch board carried no Collier entry at all. Its only row in either county is the crash from this morning at Six Mile Crossing Boulevard in Fort Myers, which now reads scene clear and which this site has carried separately.
That board covers state roads. County roads through the Estates and the streets in Immokalee are sheriff and city calls, they do not appear on it, and an empty state board is not an all clear for them.
