Florida, the lightning capital of the U.S., sees more lightning deaths and injuries than any other state. Safety experts and survivors stress that more can be done to protect residents, tourists and outdoor workers from harm.
Florida is home to 23 million residents and another 143 million tourists, each flushing 100 gallons of toilet water every day. The daily waste—1,000 tons of it—must go somewhere.
Mass tourism and foreign investment have begun to raise questions about whether outsiders are loving Costa Rica too much – and whether too many local people have been left behind.
Bonny Matejowsky/WUFT News
Air conditioning has long been a fact of life in Florida, the nation's hottest state. Rising temperatures make it increasingly a matter of life and death
(Via Florida Memory)
As North Florida’s timber industry faces hurricanes and mill closures, some landowners turn to a copper-colored side hustle: pine straw. Are the human and environmental costs worth it?
To commemorate the 60th anniversary of the civil rights movement events of 1963, 11 students – seven from the University of Florida College of Journalism and Communications in Gainesville and four from the Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University School of Journalism & Graphic Communication in Tallahassee – spent their 2023 spring break reporting from across the U.S. Civil Rights Trail.
Chemical fertilizers help feed the world – at increasingly steep costs to people and the planet. University of Florida and University of Missouri student journalists spent 16 weeks reporting the story of fertilizer from the discovery of nitrogen and phosphorous to their manufacture in supersized chemical plants along the Mississippi River to the promise of future solutions to help us rethink food production and chemical waste.
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(Rylan DiGiacomo-Rapp/WUFT News)Known for their elusive nature and mythic proportions, tarpon never fail to entice anglers looking for a challenge. But human development and climate change are hurting the species, from the time the baby fish are just a few inches long and seeking safety in coastal ponds. -
For snook, the old rules no longer apply. The tropical gamefish are taking advantage of warmer winters brought on by climate change, forming a genetically-distinct stronghold on the Nature Coast. As their historical range shifts northward, anglers are adapting, too.
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Rising costs of wastewater management in Florida leave questions about who will pick up the bill. -
Janet Simoneaux, 68, retired to Lake Como in rural Putnam County before a biosolids company announced plans to dump nearby. The company backed out before trucking in any waste in what neighbors say was a rare rural victory. -
Florida, the lightning capital of the U.S., sees more lightning deaths and injuries than any other state. Safety experts and survivors stress that more can be done to protect residents, tourists and outdoor workers from harm. There’s no better time than now: Lightning researchers are worried that climate change, which is making storms more severe, could be making lightning worse, too. -
Florida, the lightning capital of the United States, leads the nation in both the density of lightning strikes and deaths by lightning. -
How a ranching family persevered when lightning struck out of the blue. -
What are the odds of getting struck by lightning? For Floridians, much better than winning the Florida Lotto or being bitten by a shark. -
Lightning is an essential part of nature—balancing Earth’s electrical charge by transferring negative energy back to the ground. But it can also be fatal. -
Our eyes deceive us when lightning strikes like a giant spark cracking the sky in two. That giant spark is only as big around as a golf ball. Like everything else in nature, it happens for a reason. -
The age-old maxim says lightning never strikes the same place twice. Florida would beg to disagree.The state is the lightning capital of the United States as measured in deaths by lightning, with four fatalities in 2025. -
When Jordan Gonzalez was a young boy, he started hearing about his uncle Manuel Taboada’s death. Gonzalez didn’t know many details about the case, but every time the tragic murder was showcased on a true crime TV show, he would hear his father say, “That’s family…”
