Not to be outdone by The Weather Channel, Fox Weather converged onto Fort Myers Beach Wednesday as a tropical disturbance stalled over Southwest Florida.

The Rupert Murdock family machine dispatched a crew to Estero Island led by Fox Weather correspondent Nicole Valdes.

Valdes has been providing updates from along Estero Boulevard and near the remnants of the Fort Myers Beach pier that was destroyed by 2022’s Hurricane Ian.

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While a mere infant in the climate world at just 31 months of age, the network these days is not eliciting as much the response, “Fox has a weather channel?”

But it still doesn’t have the cachet of a Jim Cantore, the veteran of the past four decades on The Weather Channel, which shipped its own team to Southwest Florida Wednesday.

It brought in Justin Michaels to Naples, and like Valdes, he was providing live updates of the mega rain event hitting the west coast of Florida.

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For the Nashville-based Valdes, it’s a bit of a homecoming. The University of Florida product previously worked at WINK TV.

Almost to anchor Jane Minar’s amusement, Valdes withstood the pelting rain and whipping winds of the storm as she reported the latest from Southwest Florida during her live shots.

Based at the Naples Daily News, Columnist Phil Fernandez (pfernandez@gannett.com) grew up in Southwest Florida and has led Pulitzer Prize-winning efforts. He writes In the Know, one of USA TODAY Network’s most read local news columns in the state. Support democracy. Subscribe to a newspaper.

This article originally appeared on Naples Daily News: With tropical disturbance, Fox Weather joins Weather Channel in SWFL