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Weather: A chance of showers and thunderstorms before 8am, then showers and possibly a thunderstorm between 8am and 2pm, then showers and thunderstorms after 2pm. High near 84. Very windy, with a southwest wind 20 to 25 mph, with gusts as high as 36 mph. Chance of precipitation is 90%. New rainfall amounts between a quarter and half of an inch possible. Tuesday Night Showers and thunderstorms, mainly before 2am. Low around 77. Windy, with a southwest wind around 22 mph, with gusts as high as 31 mph. Chance of precipitation is 80%.
- Daily weather briefing from the National Weather Service in Jacksonville here.
- Drought conditions here. (What is the Keetch-Byram drought index?).
- Check today’s tides in Flagler Beach here.
- tropical cyclone activity here, and even more details here.
Today at a Glance:
In Court: The resumption of a sentencing hearing is scheduled for 8:30 a.m. before Circuit Judge Terence Perkins in Courtroom 401 at the Flagler County Courthouse in the case of Brendan Depa, the former Matanzas High School special needs student accused of assaulting a paraprofessional, in an incident recorded on video. The first part of the sentencing hearing took place on May 1. Depa tendered an open plea in late October, leaving the judge wide discretion to sentence him either as an adult or as a youthful offender. See: “Despite Severe Autism, Judge Finds Depa, Ex-Matanzas High Student, Competent to Be Tried for Assault on Aide,” “Brendan Depa’s Mother Tells Her Son’s Story,” and “The Brendan Depa I Have Come To Know.” See also:
- Brendan Depa’s Sentencing Will Not Resume Until Aug. 6, Giving Defense Time to Recover from Bad Day
- At Brendan Depa Sentencing, Prisons’ Mental Health Chief Draws Bizarrely Rosy Picture of Services Awaiting Him
- Joan Naydich, Brendan Depa’s Victim of Beating, Details How ‘Everything Was Taken Away’ from Her
- Chief Engert: How Flagler County Jail Stepped Up to Ensure Brendan Depa’s Continuing Education
- Lawsuit Blames Flagler Schools’ Failure to Address Brendan Depa’s Known Needs and Risks Before Attack on Aide
Flagler Beach’s Planning and Architectural Review Board meets at 5:30 p.m. at City Hall, 105 S 2nd Street. For agendas and minutes, go here. The board today will review a revised height ordinance.
The Palm Coast City Council meets at 6 p.m. at City Hall. For agendas, minutes, and audio access to the meetings, go here. For meeting agendas, audio and video, go here.
The Bunnell Planning, Zoning and Appeals Board meets at 6 p.m. at the Government Services Building, 1769 East Moody Boulevard, Bunnell. The board consists of Carl Lilavois, Chair; Manuel Madaleno, Nealon Joseph, Gary Masten and Lyn Lafferty.
The Flagler Beach Library Writers’ Club meets at 5 p.m. at the library, 315 South Seventh Street, Flagler Beach.
Random Acts of Insanity Standup Comedy, 8 p.m. at Cinematique Theater, 242 South Beach Street, Daytona Beach. General admission is $8.50. Every Tuesday and on the first Saturday of every month the Random Acts of Insanity Comedy Improv Troupe specializes in performing fast-paced improvised comedy.
Notably: The site is called Nukemap. You can access it here. When I do, it brings up Orlando. I don;t know if it’s because the website is reading my IP address or if Nukemap is set to Orlando getting blown off the map by default. Nukemap is a nuclear bomb simulator. You choose any city you like, including Palm Coast. Then you select the kind of warhead you want to drop on the city–the yield, in kilotons or megatons. Let’s take the 15-kiloton Little Boy type of bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima as an example. You can then choose whether you want an airburst, which causes more damage but limits radioactive waste in the air, or a surface burst, which limits damage but throws up a bigger radioactive cloud. You can click the box to give you an idea of casualties. You can click the box about radioactive fallout. Then you detonate. The result is a basic map of concentric circles of damage. The bomb would have been dropped on the C Section, as this simulation has it (not my choice, but whatever.) The result is surprisingly slight: 3,570 fatalities, 7,560 injuries, with the fireball extending to a radius of just 198 meters and the heavy blast damage to less than a quarter of a mile. The radiation radius takes in the whole C Section, and the moderate blast damage goes out almost 9 kilometers, or about 5 miles, past Palm Coast Parkway but not to State Road 100, and to U.S. 1, but not past it. The Hammock Beach Resort would also be toast. The thermal radiation radius, where everyone would get third degree bruins and die, but in a longer time stretch, would go out to the F Section and part of the barrier island. A Nagasaki-size bombs would up the casualties to 3,890. A 9 megaton warhead, the kind currently arming American ICBMs, would wipe out half of Palm Coast’s population and reach to St. Augustine and Ormond Beach. I imagine the simulator is designed to scare the hell out of us, and to some extent it does. But I find it not effective enough, and oddly understated. Those casualty figures seem low, and the blast zones smaller than I’d have imagined unless the megatonnage is in play. Oddly, when I dropped another Little Boy on Hiroshima, the simulator showed zero casualties. It had to be refreshed. Then came the casualties: similar to the numbers from the original bombing: close to 100,000 from the blast, 147,000 more injuries. A Hiroshima-sized bomb On Manhattan? 305,000 and 578,000. A thermonuclear warhead? 3.6 million dead, 3.2 million injuries. That’s more along the lines of the likely scenarios, though even those figures seem low–nothing like those in, say, The Fate of the Earth’s scenario of a bomb on Manhattan. Here. Try for yourself.
—P.T.
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The Live Calendar is a compendium of local and regional political, civic and cultural events. You can input your own calendar events directly onto the site as you wish them to appear (pending approval of course). To include your event in the Live Calendar, please fill out this form.
June 2025
Flagler County Commission Workshop
Flagler County Library Board of Trustees
Nar-Anon Family Group
Bunnell City Commission Meeting
Palm Coast City Council Workshop
Community Traffic Safety Team Meeting
St. Johns River Water Management District Meeting
Special School Board Meeting on Rule Development
Flagler County School Board Workshop: Agenda Items
Flagler Beach Library Book Club
Flagler County Planning Board Meeting
Random Acts of Insanity Standup Comedy
For the full calendar, go here.
And to think, just a few months prior, Manhattan Project chief General Leslie Groves had assured the public and Congress that death by radiation poisoning was “a very pleasant way to die.”
–From Annie Jacobsen’s Nuclear War: A Scenario (2024).
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Larry says
Am I wrong? Didn’t Flagler Beach pas a bill, initiative whatever to keep building heights to 3 story’s?
Only to be changed by a vote from residents?