Weather, Storms & Hurricane Blog

Exploring The Florida Northern Glades

Thursday’s weather was beautiful here in Southern Florida, and I made the best of it and headed out for some afternoon wildlife exploring. I hiked around the eastern region of Lake Okeechobee, surrounding dry marsh lands from the drought, and canal waterways. It was warm, upper 70’s to near 80F under a clear deep blue sky. I first started off at one of the levee locks where there is a area of very shallow warm waters that invite a huge family of alligators. For about an hour or so, I filmed several gators moving around, feeding and sun bathing, but unfortunately, most of them stayed out of reach for me to get more detailed video pictures. There was a lot of other people around, mostly northerners sight seeing, and I think the alligators where a little spooked by all the foot traffic and stayed on the distant canal bank.

• Play Video Lake Okeechobee Florida Scenes - 21.1mb

I then traveled southward to just north (7 miles) of Port Mayaca to another Lake Okeechobee levee lock system, this one being much smaller and over grown by brush from the drought the last 2 years. Here I hiked out onto a rock / concrete little inlet on the inside of the lake levee. Everything was dry, and the normally deep marshy waters were no where to be found. The Lake Okeechobee water level was a good half mile out through grass and brush that has grown on the dry lake bottom. Even with the recent rains, the lake remains at about 10.15 feet, which is still 4 feet below normal for this time of year.

Touring Drought Stricken Lake Okeechobee Florida Video

So, I continued out on to this little inlet, and came across some birds, snakes eggs, and some other wildlife. I was hoping to see maybe a Florida Panther in the brush, but not this time around, although I have seen them in the pass near the Sugarcane fields on western Palm Beach County. I just sat out there at the end of the inlet as there was no one around and it was very quiet. I shot a few time lapses and some stock Florida drought video just for the heck of it.

Then just before I was getting ready to leave, I ran into two other nice people hiking around looking for wildlife, mostly alligators. The Guy and Girl (sorry never got their names) were out trying to find gators, and the guy was new to Florida and never had seen one up close and personal. We chatted for a little while and then hiked back to the cars and I told them about the lock further up the road where I filmed the Alligators earlier in the day. We all headed back to the northern lock, and sure enough the gators where still hanging around, and some beached in the warm sun. - Nice to meet you guys!

I then wrapped up for the afternoon and headed home for a late afternoon lunch. I returned later in the evening to shoot a sunset time lapse and some static shots of the sunset just to add to the outstanding weather day. I saw some high cirrus clouds and smoke moving in overhead, and knew I just had to film a nice sunset scene. I have put together a 6 minute video of some of the traveling around I did yesterday, and you can view it here: [ PLAY VIDEO ] 21.1MB Take note in the video during the time-lapse towards the end of the sunset, you’ll see two jet planes blasting by pretty close to each other. Overall a excellent relaxing day and I plan to have more over the weekend. Enjoy the little video.

Related Posts:

• Florida Drought Photos and Video 2007
• Taylor Creek Wildfire Video 2007
• Filming The Florida Drought, Alligator Fest
• Record Rains Flood Canals, Gators Have Fun
• Florida Time Lapse and Glades Scene Video 2008

(2 votes, average: 5 out of 5)

 Loading ...