Florida’s Gulf coast

Guides

Short explainers for the parts of the board that decide whether you go, for every Florida county board, Escambia County to Collier County. Each one links to the agency that owns the facts, and none of them go out of date on a schedule. The live readings are on the board.

• Tsunami: what to do on the Gulf
  What is actually known about tsunamis on this coast, the sea’s own warning signs, what each alert level means, your county’s alerts, and why storm surge is the water that usually does harm here.
• Small craft advisories on Florida’s Gulf coast
  Which bay, sound or Gulf zone each town reads, from the Mobile, Tallahassee, Tampa Bay or Miami office, and what an advisory, gale or special marine warning means in knots.
• Reading a tide table on Florida’s Gulf coast
  What the zero is measured from, why the tide here is small and comes once a day in the west and twice down the peninsula, which stations are live gauges and which are predictions, and why the wind can move the water more than the tide.
• Road closures on this coast
  The crashes the Florida Highway Patrol is working in each county, what “Blocked” means, and why a crash inside city limits may not be there.
• Fire: what is burning, and burn bans
  The Florida Forest Service’s county burn bans, what a yard debris ban stops, why the map can miss a county’s ban, and the wildfires reported nearby.
• Oysters and clams: the harvest areas and FWC’s rules
  FDACS’s daily status of each harvest area, from Pensacola Bay to the Ten Thousand Islands, FWC’s oyster season, and Apalachicola Bay’s permits.
• Beach water: who samples, and what an advisory means
  The Department of Health’s 170 sites from Perdido Key to Collier County, Good, Moderate and Poor, when an advisory goes up, and what the samples cannot tell you.
• Fishing: what is open, and the limits
  FWC’s Gulf limits and its redfish, seatrout and snook regions, the red snapper calendar, the seasons FWC sets by executive order, and why a fish says Check.