NAPLES, Fla. – Florida’s Department of Transportation shut down part of Interstate 75 early Thursday due to heavy smoke from a wildfire that has exploded to more than 30,604 acres in South Florida this week amid the state’s worst drought in 25 years.
I-75 was closed early Thursday between Exits 80 and 23, part of an 80-mile stretch across the Everglades known as Alligator Alley — a key cross-state artery.
The highway reopened around 6:30 a.m. local time.
The National Fire is now 25,780 acres in Big Cypress National Forest near Naples, according to the National Interagency Wildfire Enterprise.
Florida’s Department of Transportation warned drivers in Collier County Tuesday about heavy smoke being produced by the blaze, as well as drivers in the nearby Everglades about smoke from brush fires in that region.
The entire state is suffering from bone-dry conditions.
More than 650 wildfires have been observed across the state since the beginning of 2026, the Florida Forest Service said earlier in February.
However, some much-needed rain is expected to provide a modicum of relief beginning Thursday and lasting through the first half of the weekend.
According to the U.S. Drought Monitor, 98 percent of the state is experiencing some level of drought, with over 67 percent in “severe drought”, the most since 2001.
Florida has been in a prolonged dry pattern since the 2025 hurricane season.
“Tropical systems, for all the destruction they cause, still produce lots of rain,” the FOX Forecast Center said.
2025 was a rare Atlantic hurricane season that saw no landfalling hurricanes in the U.S. That lack of rain continued through the fall and has held through this winter.
Drought conditions are also worsening for other parts of the region, including Georgia, where 100 percent of the state is experiencing drought, although not quite as severe as Florida’s.
An area of low pressure will swing out of the Plains and bring a little relief to the Southeast.
According to the FOX Forecast Center, a cold front associated with this system will begin to drop rain across parts of Tennessee and North Carolina through Thursday morning, before spreading across the South including Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina through the day.
The cold front will slide south, bringing rain into the Florida Panhandle and the northern and central parts of the state by Friday afternoon, and showers are expected to linger through Saturday morning.
Naples, Florida is almost over 1.5 inches below their average rain year-to-date and West Palm Beach is 5 inches below its average.
According to the FOX Forecast Center, West Palm Beach has yet to see a single day with rain this year, over a fifteenth of an inch. Parts of South Florida could double their rain total for the year with this one shot of rain.
Rain totals will generally be around 1–2 inches across a corridor from East Tennessee through Georgia and Central Florida, including the Atlanta, Jacksonville, and Orlando metro areas.
While this is a welcome break from the dry conditions, drought conditions are expected to persist through the rest of Florida’s dry season, which lasts until May.
