After Hurricane Ian, Southwest Florida 'hyper-vigilant' as Idalia moves nearby in the Gulf

From Everglades City to Fort Myers Beach and Sanibel and all points in between, Southwest Florida isn't taking any chances with Hurricane Idalia.

As the region tragically learned with catastrophic Hurricane Ian last year, 2004's Charley and other tropical systems, weather is an inexact science.

Both, on the same predicted track well north of the region just as Idalia's Gulf of Mexico forecast, suddenly veered right with horrific results.

However, on Monday, the Atlantic Ocean's Hurricane Franklin was affecting a ridge of high pressure that was serving as a bit of a forcefield for Collier, Lee and Charlotte counties, according to meteorologist Josh Nagelberg of Perry Weather, which advises some of the world's largest companies, universities and sports franchises including Amazon, the PGA Tour, the Philadelphia Eagles and Stanford.

"A lot of you in Southwest Florida are probably thinking, 'Well, we saw this with Ian last year where we were expecting a landfall (at Florida's big bend), and instead it ended up farther down the coast.' In fact, Tampa Bay was the landfall point up until about 12 hours before the storm, and then we saw a turn," said Nagelberg, who does regular YouTube reports. Franklin "is reshaping the size of our ridge of high pressure. (I) don't think that Idalia is going to cut into the ridge into Southwest Florida. (In 2022), with Ian, we did not have a ridge in this area."

But as the National Hurricane Center issued warnings and watches for various potential impacts, Lee County schools determined early to close campuses for Tuesday while Collier was waiting until evening to decide, and dreadful previous experiences told many Southwest Floridians to expect the worst: They were preparing for such this week.

Familiar scenes from a year ago had returned as motorists crowded the Fort Myers Costco Gas Station, where two workers Monday morning directed the traffic in the winding parking lot line. In St. James City, which saw significant flooding from Ian, residents had begun moving vehicles and themselves to higher ground and filling bathtubs.

"Everyone's a little more hyper-vigilant about doing those things this time," said Julia Simpson, secretary of the charitable Matlacha Hookers. "Maybe if it was on the East Coast it wouldn't be so traumatic for us, but since it's so uncertain and it is in the Gulf, people are trying to get the basics taken care of."

About 1,100 residents and visitors remained on Sanibel as City Council member Holly Smith pushed Lee County for an emergency declaration, which had not come by early Monday afternoon.

“That would allow for different levels of preparation, such as evacuations. We know it’s going to be developing, so we’re following suit as we always do," said Smith, who was mayor during and in the aftermath of one of the most devastating hurricanes in history. After Ian, “I would rather have a citizen upset with me for a couple of days if nothing comes to pass, then have to handle the mess we did post-Ian.”

Still, President Joe Biden did make an emergency declaration for Lee, Charlotte and 31 other counties at the request of Gov. Ron DeSantis through a state of emergency list from the governor, who expanded affected areas late Monday to include Collier and up the overall total to 46.

The move by Biden, who spoke with DeSantis Monday, opens the door to federal disaster assistance to supplement response efforts tied to Idalia as the president did with Ian and subsequent billions of dollars of help for the region and the state. Biden also began the deployment of management assistance teams and activated urban search and rescue crews so they can begin responding to hit areas as soon as possible as they did last year.

Popular barrier island spot Cabbage Key Inn & Restaurant, where Jimmy Buffett is rumored to have written the song "Cheeseburger in Paradise," is taking preparations to heart. The popular post-fishing trip stop shut down in advance of Idalia, and employees who left the island were given both Tuesday and Wednesday off.

"We are battening down the hatches," restaurant manager Thomas James said.

Marco Island's utility department is making sure its vehicles have fuel and they have enough fuel for the emergency generators "for water and sewer stations to make sure we have full function of utilities," said Assistant City Manager Casey Lucius.

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Residents there received a Code Red alert from the city at 12:38 p.m., updating them on the storm.

Matlacha/Pine Island Fire District chief Ben Mickuleit said the district had alerted firefighters over the weekend that they might be called on to deal with the storm. Although Ian snapped electrical poles and took the island's entire grid down, Mickuleit said he wasn't concerned about the potential for damage due to high winds. Instead, he worried Idalia would intensify damage to homes hit by Ian that had not yet been repaired.

"There's a lot of homes that still are tarped within the district, so depending on how severe the wind is it might cause more damage to the home," he said.

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Weather experts like Nagelberg were monitoring conditions with Hurricane Franklin's influence on that critical ridge of high pressure, watching for potential changes that could shift Idalia's itinerary closer to Southwest Florida.

"Is there a chance this ridge gets pushed a little bit farther East and opens up that avenue? Certainly, but I just don't see it happening," Nagelberg said. "We do have a trough over the eastern United States (that) is going to pick up Franklin and turn it, (and) it's also eventually going to pick up Idalia and turn it to the right. So this trough is our biggest player on the field, but we have a smaller player in the way."

Based at the Naples Daily News, Columnist Phil Fernandez (pfernandez@gannett.com) writes for the USA TODAY NETWORK, which supplemented this report through the efforts of Amanda Inscore, Kate Cimini, J. Kyle Foster, Nikki Ross and Amy Bennett-Williams. Support Democracy and subscribe to a newspaper.

This article originally appeared on Naples Daily News: SWFL scrambles as Idalia strengthens and heads north to Big Bend