Lee and Collier

Both Southwest Florida forecast offices wrote new heat advisories overnight again, and this time each one carries a heat index of 112, the highest figure either office has attached to these counties this month

Money & World

The Editorial Team · August 18, 2026

Looking straight up at the sun. It burns as a hard white disc, over-exposed at the centre, behind a thin sheet of wispy cirrus cloud that streams across the frame in feathered curls. The sky is deep blue at the lower left and washes out to pale grey around the sun. No ground, horizon, buildings, people, signage or text are in view. — Stock photo. Not the actual scene. *Photo: Tuğba / Pexels*

What it changes

The number is the change. For the first time in this stretch both Southwest Florida forecast offices have written 112 into the same night's heat advisories, a degree above the 111 the Tampa Bay office gave Lee County on Friday and two above the 110 the Miami office had been carrying for Collier. Everything else about the window has stayed where it was: 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., eight hours, the same valid block both offices used four days ago. So a resident who has been living inside this advisory since the start of the month does not need to change the shape of the day, only the weight given to the middle of it. Both offices rate the product as moderate in severity, and both wrote it hours ahead, before one in the morning, which means neither county has to wait for a mid-morning enlargement the way Lee did on August 13. Anyone in Fort Myers, Cape Coral, Bonita Springs, Estero, Lehigh Acres, Naples, Marco Island, Immokalee or Golden Gate who checks before leaving the house this morning is reading the same map that will be in force at noon. The people the last stretch of the window is aimed at have not changed: roofers, landscapers, pool and pressure washing crews, road crews, tradespeople loading trucks at the end of a shift, and anyone whose work does not stop at five. The split between the two counties is worth understanding for what it is not. Lee falls under the Tampa Bay Ruskin office and Collier falls under the Miami office, and the two write their heat products on separate event numbers without reference to each other, so a gap between the two county figures on any given day is a difference in who drew the forecast rather than a difference in the air over the county line. Today there is no gap at the top of the range at all. One practical note for anyone reading this alongside a primary ballot: polls in Collier and Lee are open on the same day this advisory covers, and the hottest part of the window, late morning through late afternoon, sits over the middle of the voting day. The instruction text attached to both products is the same this time, and it is the plainest version either office uses: drink plenty of fluids, stay in an air-conditioned room, stay out of the sun, and check up on relatives and neighbors.

The document: National Weather Service, Heat Advisory products for Coastal and Inland Lee and for Coastal and Inland Collier, issued August 18, 2026.

Both Southwest Florida forecast offices wrote new heat advisories overnight again, and this time each one carries a heat index of 112, the highest figure either office has attached to these counties this month

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