Hey, Jim, we'll be at Marco Island in about three weeks. How are the fires on that side of the state? And I'm glad you are okay. Stay healthy.
Marco is fine for now; nothing burning in that area. However, depending on the wind, it's possible Marco could get some smoke from our fire. The NW corner of our fire is about 80-85 miles from Marco.
Here's a link for the Florida Division of Forestry site:
http://www.fl-dof.com/wildfire/
On that page, there are some useful links on the right side of the page. The most helpful is the
Daily Wildfire Report, a .pdf file. If you look at the map of fires over 100 acres, it will look like the whole state is burning, but when you click on the individual symbols, you'll see that most of those fires have been out for weeks.
Our fire in Everglades National Park (the Mustang Corner Fire) has grown to 39,465 acres as of last evening. It was a little over 19,000 acres when I was last out there on Friday, May 15. Our park email has been down for several days, so I can't access any of our detailed maps, but I think the fire is burning mostly in old fire scar areas with very little fuel. It's 80% controlled now, so we're in pretty good shape.
I'm working the fire tomorrow, so I'll know more then.
Unfortunately, the fire destroyed two of the remaining 6-7 known habitats for one of our endangered species, so it's pretty catastrophic in that sense.