Combined dispatches

“The Atlantic is awfully warm this year,” said Kerry Emanuel, a meteorologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, adding that it’s partly a result of global warming, natural variability and the ocean’s recovering from sulfate aerosols pollution that cooled it decades ago. Emanuel noted that in the entire Atlantic Ocean, not just the tropical Atlantic, it’s not unusual to have storms in June.

A tropical wave that has moved off the coast of Africa since last week has strengthened into Tropical Depression Three. A second wave is now also moving into the Atlantic.

The first tropical depression of the 2023 Atlantic hurricane season developed off the Florida Panhandle Thursday afternoon. Tropical Depression Two will bring rounds of heavy rain and the potential for flooding through late-week, especially across portions of South Florida.

The National Hurricane Center reported that a central Gulf of Mexico system was an area of disorganized showers and thunderstorms associated with a surface trough of low pressure interacting with an upper-level trough over the central Gulf of Mexico.

As Florida Gulf Coast University prepares to usher in a new era with President-elect Aysegul Timur, one member of the state university system’s Board of Governors suggested Wednesday that Timur get a “shorter contract” when she steps into the role.After a more than year-long search for a successor to retiring President Mike Martin, the FGCU Board of Trustees last week voted 7-6 to tap Timur for the job.

The explosion of the giant rocket was not seen as a negative by SpaceX officials since this was considered a developmental flight.

After upsetting Washington State Saturday the FGCU women were denied a trip to the Sweet 16 by a tough Villanova team.