Hurricane Wilma video and photography in Marco Island and Naples, FL blog.

Note: The video in this blog is only for this blog. If you need stock footage, please visit www.bnvn.com

Hurricane Wilma, the unexpected late season storm that broke several records. Once again I was contracted out by The Weather Channel to shoot Hurricane Wilma Video. I wanted to go to Cancun Mexico but due to the dangers of the storm and being outside of the US, I decided to play it safe and wait until it hit Florida.

I flew into Florida on Friday the 21st of October to make sure I was in place and able to move if needed. My target starting point was Fort Myers with a target ground zero of Marco Island to Naples Florida. I was very confident of my target area and stayed in Punta Gorda Florida for this hurricane. Punta Gorda was where I chased Hurricane Charley last year. It was great to be back in town and meet up with all the friends I made there.

They were worried to see me with a Hurricane coming because they thought maybe they would get hit again by Wilma but I reminded them that I like to stay outside of where the eye will make landfall so I have a place to go back to after the storm.

This chase was different. I chased with a new friend, Brian who shots a lot of underwater video, his web page is www.subsurfacemedia.com. He wanted to come with me to intercept the eye of Wilma with me and get a feel for how to work in the fast paced electronic news gathering environment. I was suppose to meet up with another friend, Bill Reid from California, but as we were heading into Naples, his cell phone died and I lost contact with him when I got into Naples. The last I heard was he was riding out the storm with another friend of his in Naples, so he was all set for the storm.

I have four different parts to the Hurricane Wilma video blog. The first part of the video was shot on October 22nd, of Surfers riding some large waves in the Gulf of Mexico off of Siesta Key. The large waves from Wilma as it stalled for a day over Cancun were already reaching as far north as Tampa. No the image of Wilma from the Cartoon is not something created below but a video still from the video I shot of a sign. I have a feeling some media company will be going after people using that image in the coming weeks on T Shirts for royalty fee's...

The second Hurricane Wilma video blog is from Naples Florida. This was from just after Midnight on the 24th. This video shows the very strong police force stopping anyone they saw out after the curfew during the storm. Nothing like getting pulled over on National TV!!! The video also shows some of the beach and the waves. I rushed to get this video edited and up to The Weather Channel before we headed out to Marco Island for the first half of the storm.

Once on Marco Island Florida. I was not that worried about storm surge for the first half of Wilma due to the fact that the storm was moving so fast and we were going to hit the eye almost head on. My feeling was that the major flooding was going to hit the Florida Keys but the eye would go north. I was still kind of worried that I could be wrong and I would be out of luck if it turned to the east at the last minute like Hurricane Charley did. My luck held and the good lord was watching out for us, again... Once again the police were out even during the height of the storm protecting the island from anyone even thinking of looting.

We got some great footage around Marco Island and I was able to get a video out once again to The Weather Channel before all the power went out and we could not see anything in the dark. The winds were incredible.

Once the eye of Hurricane Wilma hit, I had a feeling my luck would run out. Brian and I checked out some of the damage around the island but we could not see much in the dark. So during the eye of Wilma, we drove off the island in the calm of the eye of Hurricane Wilma. I was watching the Key West radar the whole time during the hurricane so I knew the eye was still huge and we had about an hour from one side of the eye to the other.

Once off of Marco Island and back on Highway 41 North, we were just south of Naples when we entered the second half of Hurricane Wilma's western eye wall. The winds went from calm to hurricane force fast. While in the western eye wall, we drove slowly back towards downtown Naples to where we were shooting video before on 5th Avenue. Now instead of police all over the streets, it was debris and flooding all over the street with lots of high winds. Lots of Coconut's all over the place from the busted up palm trees. The Hurricane Wilma video below is pretty intense.

Here are the still photographs form Hurricane Wilma on 10/24/2005 on Marco Island and Naples.

The nighttime photographs are from Marco Island and the daylight photographs are from Naples Florida.