After Hurricane Ian’s rampage through Florida last year, everyone is keeping a wary eye on tropical forecasts this season — especially Mike Boylan.
With close to two million followers across the web and social media, you could describe him as Florida’s favorite hometown weather forecaster.
The Bradenton-born Boylan runs Mike’s Weather Page, a website once described by hurricane harbinger Jim Cantore of The Weather Channel as a “one-stop shop” for the latest tropical updates.
It serves up a smorgasbord of spaghetti models, satellite imagery and weather radar from trusted sources, all compiled in one place.
Since he launched his hobby in 2004, Boylan’s audience has grown exponentially as he’s expanded to different platforms.
In 2023, that includes Facebook (1.3 million followers), a Mike’s Weather Page app, a YouTube channel (44,500 subscribers), and, more recently, a presence on Instagram (113,000 followers), Twitter (87,600 followers) and TikTok (129,400 followers).
“It’s fun. I have a different crowd on every platform,” Boylan said. “It’s also hard. The attention span is so short.”
And when it comes to producing content, Boylan is a one-man show.
Thanks to sponsorships, Boylan was able to quit his side work as a web designer, and he now weather blogs full-time from his home in the Tampa area.
But starting with Hurricane Irma, Boylan decided forecasting storms wasn’t enough — he wanted to go out and document their effects firsthand.
After he forecasts a major storm’s path, Boylan hops in his pickup and heads out to cover the landfall. He has hunted storms through Florida, Louisiana and Texas.
When an online comment derided Boylan as a “redneck storm chaser,” he put it on a T-shirt.
Boylan is always looking for new ways to reach people with his hurricane coverage, and he’s not afraid to have fun with it.
His French bulldogs sometimes join him on his weekday morning weather talk, “The Daily Brew.” He dons a silly hat for the younger crowd on TikTok.
In between weather posts on Facebook, you can catch Boylan enjoying a local craft beer or having a backyard shrimp boil with his daughters.
In 2021, Boylan’s efforts earned him the Tropical Meteorology Award from the Governor’s Hurricane Conference. The award is usually reserved for government meteorologists.
“I’m happy to be able to be who I am, but still have that credibility and trust from pretty high up,” Boylan said.
But as Spider Man’s Uncle Ben would say, “With great power comes great responsibility.”
“It makes you realize how much of a connection people have with what you say,” Boylan said. “I have to be careful, because people are clinging to every word.
“There are times for me to joke and drink and show crazy pictures, and then there’s time to be serious.”
Aside from the fringes of a major hurricane, one of the most likely places to find Boylan outside of his home forecasting office is at Chili’s.
If Chili’s fandom was measured like hurricanes, Boylan would be a Category 5. His favorite menu item? “Probably a burger. Chili’s is my safe place,” Boylan said.
At the beginning of June, we met Boylan at a Tampa Bay area Chili’s to hear his predictions for the 2023 hurricane season.
The following is a condensed version of his interview with the Herald.
El Niño or no, ‘don’t let your guard down’
The 2023 hurricane season will coincide with an El Niño year. In case you need a refresher, El Niño is the climate pattern that typically brings wetter and cooler conditions to the Gulf Coast with less hurricanes in the Atlantic.
But Boylan says: “Don’t let your guard down. It only takes one.”
“I think Florida’s at higher risk than normal this year looking at our history with El Niño.
“The talking point around El Niño is that it’s a slower season. And I worry about that. Because you might have less numbers, but that doesn’t mean you won’t have that one storm.
“A lot of years that Florida had activity was during El Niño years. 2004 was El Niño. In 2018, we had Michael. Andrew and Dorian were El Niño years. They all went around the Bahamas.
“So my prediction is for something to develop in the western Atlantic and also in the Gulf of Mexico, because those areas tend to avoid the El Niño effects. I think those are going to be the spots to watch. So that means Florida’s east coast and the upper Gulf of Mexico again.
“Don’t let your guard down. I think Florida’s not going to get away without something close, based on history.”
Mike is worried that the Tampa Bay area is getting overconfident after several major storms have veered away at the last minute.
“We had Charlie, Irma and Ian that all turned and missed a direct hit on us.
“I just have this bad feeling that nobody is going to evacuate when we have that one that doesn’t turn.
“Ian was a wake up. Like, holy crap.
“A lot of people in Fort Myers said they were caught off guard. I’m going to be the one who tells people that they should probably evacuate.
“Go away from the water. And if it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen.”
Mike’s hurricane blogging has made him somewhat of a weather celebrity. He’s often greeted by fans in public.
“I never do this, but are you Mike?” said a fan named Phil Lawler who recognized Boylan at Chili’s.
“I follow him on everything,” Lawler said. “I moved down here a year and a half ago from Chicago, and he’s my go-to for all weather down here. I wouldn’t know what’s going on without him. It makes me feel better.”
“I’ve never met a bad fan,” Boylan said. “When I go to a Rays game, at least a dozen people will come up to say hi. I love it.
“I’ll meet a complete stranger and we start talking weather, and it ignites me.”
Mike was born in Bradenton, Florida and went to Jessie P. Miller Elementary School for several years before his family moved up to Pinellas County. His obsession with hurricanes stems back to childhood.
“It was 1985, Hurricane Elena. It was a holiday weekend and we had family in town. I was 12. Elena sat off our coast.
“I just remember the howling of the winds. It went on all night. I was excited. Every howl was like an adventure. You didn’t know what would happen next.
“But the family who was in town was scared to death. They couldn’t take it, and they went back to Charlotte in the middle of the night.
“I guess that’s kind of the whole market.
“You have the scared ones and the ones who ride it out.”
Mike’s favorite social media platform? That would be TikTok by far. He uses the platform so much that it’s permanently burned into his phone screen.
“The first thing I do in the morning is flip on the weather models to see what’s changed overnight.
“Then I go to TikTok. I am a TikTok addict.
“TikTok Live lets you pretty much get away with anything. I go on there a lot and just go nuts. I’ll go live around the fire pit, share some shenanigans.”
What are some highlights for you since you started Mike’s Weather Page?
“Last year, the State of Florida reached out and I did a one-on-one with Kevin Guthrie, the director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management. And they actually came to my page to do a Zoom.
“Which is crazy to think that they’d come to a private guy with no education. That was pretty good.
“And then winning the Tropical Meteorology Award — I was the first civilian to ever win it. Usually it’s National Weather Service people.”
Mike’s favorite song? Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird.”
“I didn’t become a doctor or anything that means much. So it means a lot to think that people can rely on the little bit I can do.
“‘Free Bird’ is my favorite song, and I always think about that line, ‘If I leave here tomorrow, would you still remember me?’
“It makes me feel like I’m doing something good. If I was to die tomorrow, at least I could feel like I contributed a little bit.”
Do meteorologists mingle? You bet, says Mike, who has befriended the entire local weather market and a childhood inspiration.
“I used to help Dennis Phillips with a show back before Facebook. When I started, he was my biggest cheerleader, and he still is. I think the coolest thing for me is our local market.
“I’ve become friends with Paul Dellegatto, Mike Clay, Dennis Phillips, Bobby Deskins, Jennifer Leigh.
“Jim Cantore and I have become friends. I never dreamed in a million years that we would be on a first-name basis.”
What could Florida do better to prepare people for hurricanes? Mike has a couple ideas.
“The two things I think we could do better as a state: educate more about the cone and what it means and stress the seriousness of effects outside that eye.
“Everyone focuses on the center line. But the eye can go anywhere in that cone. And it did — at the very bottom of that cone it hit Fort Myers last year. But nobody was focused on that.
“Another thing is inland effects. There’s so much focus on landfall that people inland don’t understand what they’re going to get. People in Arcadia flooded with Ian.”
Mike’s scariest hurricane moment? Driving Louisiana back roads moments before Hurricane Ida made landfall without a plan of where to go.
“I went over one bridge, and I got really close to edge and it felt like I was going to get pushed into the water. My truck’s huge.
“And then I was trying to find a place to park, and I got on this road with no place to turn around and it was all marshes. I ended up making it to a La Quinta hotel.
“It was Category 4 storm, I got there with minutes to spare. They had a to pry the door open.
“Air conditioners were blowing in, the roof was falling apart, people were screaming, The roof of the house next door came off.
“I had my moment. I thought, what am I doing. I better not go out this way, cause I’d feel bad for my girls.
“Now I plan a lot better.”
What have you learned about people from covering hurricanes?
“It defines a lifetime. And if you lived through it and survived it together, that is your common bond.
“I’ve been to four or five towns now that have been hit hard. They’ve lived through something that’s traumatic, and as a community they just come together. It’s so powerful. Everybody’s stronger because of the storm.
“They put aside politics, they put aside religion, they put aside any differences. It brings out the best.
“When I went up to Hurricane Michael in Mexico Beach for example — this guy had a food truck and fed everybody. That guy had his home open for lineman. People volunteered their time and equipment to clean up. Those are things I never would have seen without leaving the house.”
