Residents and tourists on Fort Myers Beach welcomed 2025 very differently than they expected. Instead of seeing beautiful fireworks in the sky, hundreds of people watched just colored fog.
"My gosh, I mean, you couldn't see anything," said Larry Root, who was visiting Fort Myers Beach.
"We heard a lot of fireworks, but we didn't see one," said Shayne Wilfur, a Wisconsin resident.
That's the reality people had to face on Tuesday.
"With the, fog It was more like just seeing lightning strikes, you know you didn't see a beautiful firework that they paid thousands of dollars for. So it's a shame that the fog came in," said Janine Gurgone, from Fort Myers.
Betsey Cusimano and her husband visiting from New York were worried as well, they decided not to go to Times Square last night because of the fog.
"It's sad because a lot of people travel to probably with the vacation being nice two weeks off from school at least where we're from, we had two weeks off. So we travel down here, so I'm sure there was a lot of tourists that wanted to see it as well," said Betsy Cusimano.
NBC2 reached out to the town of Fort Myers Beach on Wednesday to see if the town had any plans of canceling the event. The town responded saying " Per our mayor's comments, "We did discuss canceling them and trying to postpone them till today Jan. 1 2025(1/1/25) but didn’t. Once the fireworks were on the barge, the show either went on or the money was lost. Issue is with scheduling the barge not so much with security. It also has to do with scheduling requirements for the Fire Department and the Lee County Sheriff's Office. These are planned months in advance and the decision to postpone or move the dates has to be done in a reasonable amount of time. We went with the forecast of lifting and it didn’t. We are not happy with the outcome either but can’t control Mother Nature."
"Very disappointed. I'm sure and, you know as we were going to come down here, we're only less than two miles from here. You know, we didn't want to drive too far to come down here just because you couldn't see the fireworks anyway, said Rick Moore a Fort Myers Beach resident.
For others, they know fireworks will always be there.
"We don't plan on doing fireworks, we plan on soaking up as much sun. This is our last day here and we're headed back to the tippy top of Wisconsin. Happy New Year," said Wilfur.
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