In the hour after dawn, the cattle ranches north of Lake Okeechobee become an almost fantastical rendering of bucolic bliss. Perfect Florida sunshine rolls across miles of fire-hued grass, silhouetting idle cows in twos and threes, backlighting patches of slender, bushy-topped Sabal palms with bursts of orange and red. It’s as if a cowboy story had been illustrated by Dr. Seuss.
Then the heat starts. On a typical summer day, the temperature here breaks 80F by 9 a.m., 90F by early afternoon. And it’s only getting hotter. Of the 10 warmest months on record, all but one have come since 2016. The average temperature over a 24-hour period has exceeded 88F only nine times since 1953; eight of them were in the past three years.
