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Weather: Mostly sunny, with a high near 77. Southwest wind 5 to 10 mph, with gusts as high as 17 mph. Thursday Night: Partly cloudy, with a low around 55. Light south wind.
- 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 Daytona Beach (a few minutes off from Flagler Beach) here.
- Tropical cyclone activity here, and even more details here.
Today at a Glance:
Drug Court convenes before Circuit Judge Dawn Nichols at 10 a.m. in Courtroom 401 at the Flagler County courthouse, Kim C. Hammond Justice Center 1769 E Moody Blvd, Bldg 1, Bunnell. Drug Court is open to the public. See the Drug Court handbook here and the participation agreement here.
The Flagler Beach City Commission meets at 5:30 p.m. at City Hall, 105 South 2nd Street in Flagler Beach. Watch the meeting at the city’s YouTube channel here. Access meeting agenda and materials here. See a list of commission members and their email addresses here.
The Palm Coast Beautification and Environmental Advisory Committee meets at 5 p.m. at City Hall, 160 Lake Avenue, Palm Coast. But it’s a good idea to verify whether the committee is actually meeting this evening, as it tends to be lax.
Model Yacht Club Races at the Pond in Palm Coast’s Central Park, from noon to 2 p.m. in Central Park in Town Center, 975 Central Ave. Join Bill Wells, Bob Rupp and other members of the Palm Coast Model Yacht Club, watch them race or join the races with your own model yacht. No dues to join the club, which meets at the pond in Central Park every Thursday.
Flagler Beach United Methodist Church Food Pantry: Flagler Beach United Methodist Church‘s food pantry is open today from 9:30 a.m. to noon at 1500 S. Daytona Ave, Flagler Beach. The church’s mission is to provide nourishment and support in a welcoming, respectful environment. To find us, please turn at the corner of 15 Street and S. Daytona Ave, pull into the grass parking area and enter the green door.
Free Tax Preparation Services in Flagler County: The AARP Foundation’s Tax Aide provides free tax preparation services at six locations in Palm Coast, Flagler Beach and Flagler County through April 15, but you must make an appointment first and fill out paperwork. To do both, go here.
Notably: A third of the way into Ian McEwan’s What We Can Know, one gets very nostalgic for what he describes: our present, our lives today, dry, luxurious, jet-setting, before the “inundation,” the cataclysmic effects of global warming, the sea washing over New York City, half of Britain, presumably most of Florida. It’s a post-apocalyptic novel set in the year 2119, narrated by a humanities professor investigating one poem written and first recited at a birthday party in 2014, when the lives of everyone in attendance could be reconstructed from quadrillions of bits of data stored, in 2119, in new Lagos, Nigeria, apparently the repository of all things 20th and 21st century internet. You could hardly name a better novelist writing in England today, and after the death of Martin Amis, who was so hit and miss, and the fading of Julian Barnes, there’s hardly a better writing working there now (Kazuo Ishiguro aside, and I canot judge Zadie Smith, whose one of those writers I keep starting but never finishing). McEwan in What We Can Know wants to “rob the past of its privacy,” and does so, while writing a valentine to our vanishing world. I’m hoping the next two-thirds of the book don’t turn soggy.
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.
April 2026
Free Tax Preparation Services in Flagler County
Flagler County Commission Morning Meeting
Beverly Beach Town Commission meeting
Nar-Anon Family Group
Free Tax Preparation Services in Flagler County
In Court: Anne Mae Demegillo Arraignment
Flagler Beach United Methodist Church Food Pantry
Weekly Chess Club for Teens, Ages 10-18, at the Flagler County Public Library
Flagler County Library Board of Trustees
Flagler Beach Library Writers’ Club
Flagler Beach Planning and Architectural Review Board
Palm Coast City Council Meeting
Bunnell Planning, Zoning and Appeals Board
Hammock Community Association Meeting
Random Acts of Insanity Standup Comedy
For the full calendar, go here.
It comes without warning, like a slap – nostalgia, though that can hardly be the word for a place I never saw. But it strikes, deep in my chest, a curious pleasure-pain of longing, delight, sadness. I think those who love our accumulated centuries of literature feel this most. And it’s not only the Lakes. Simply writing those place names – magical Swindon! – brings on a sweet melancholy. Oh, to have been there, when strawberries and oranges came in winter as a matter of course. Even to set down a date–2010! To have been alive then in those resourceful raucous times, when the sea stood off at a respectful distance, when you could walk in any direction as far as you liked and keep your feet dry. When you might see and hear the real Francis Blundy in proud Huddersfield–1994, in the town hall. This longing for what was never known and is lost needs its word, something beyond nostalgia, which pines for what was once known. It’s not quite an affliction, but nor is it a resource. That pleasure-pain is emotionally disruptive, it wrecks concentration. I happen to know one of its most exquisitely evoked descriptions. I read it many years ago as a research student and it has never left me.
–From Ian McEwan’s What We Can Know (2025).
Bo Peep says
There was a lot more chance of wat with sleepy Joey and the know nothing cabinet at the helm.
Skibum says
There was and still is a lot more chance of child molesters running around free without consequence with pedophile protector and maybe underage sex predator and convicted felon prez orange face at the helm. But I guess irrational sheeple like you don’t care at all about supporting sex perverts, convicted felons, documented fraudsters and con men as long as they have that coveted (R) behind their name on the ballot, huh?
Pogo says
@Islands in plastic oceans
https://www.google.com/search?q=world+population+displacement+sea-level+rise+by+year
Ray W. says
Two news outlets recently approached the issue of protester arrests in American cities.
The Associated Press focused on actual prosecutions of protestors arrested in Washington D.C., Portland, Los Angeles and Chicago, and not raw arrest numbers. The Guardian studied those arrested in Chicago and Los Angeles.
I do not claim to know why neither news outlet studied Minneapolis other than to infer that events are too recent to have those arrested make it far enough through the courts.
The AP found that 166 protesters from all four studied cities had been prosecuted for either misdemeanors or felonies. 100 were accused by felony indictment. Of the 100, 27 had seen their charges dismissed or reduced and then dismissed. Four had pled as charged. Ten had faced charges reduced to misdemeanors, and then pleaded to the lower offenses. All five who stood trial had been acquitted. As an aside, a third news source reported that in 2024, fewer than 1% of all federal prosecutions had resulted in an acquittal. 45 cases remain pending. I cannot explain why the figures add up to 91, not 100.
In The Guardian’s story, of the 92 arrested in Chicago during the ICE surge, 74 were never charged, 13 prosecutions had been initiated and then dismissed, and five remained pending.
Of the 103 L.A. arrests, 25 had been dismissed, including one involving an alleged sworn punch to the face of an ICE agent where independent video showed no punch at all. 25 more had ended with a guilty plea. The rest were pending at the time of the story.
Make of this what you will.
Ray W. says
I didn’t think very much about this until I stumbled on a study using the annual Audubon Society’s Christmas bird count. Much of the conversation today about bird deaths centers on opponents of windmills. And, yes, from what I can find, as many as one million birds die each year from windmill strikes.
Each year since Christmas 1900, the Audubon Society has collected data sent in from birders living all across the country.
Researchers conceived a hypothesis that they could compare bird sightings counts from records submitted before and after a fossil fuel well being drilled. Bird sighting counts drop, on average, 15% after drilling.
I looked further. On average, feral and domestic American cats kill an estimated 2.4 billion birds each year. Most of the stories on this issue come from birder publications, so they might be biased.
Make of this what you will.
Ray W. says
According to the BBC, Denmark’s Prime Minister, Mette Frederiksen, just called for early national elections.
She stated: “We as Danes and as Europeans will really have to stand on our own feet. … We need to define our relationship with the United States.”
Make of this what you will.
Ray W. says
According to a Physics.org article, researchers associated with the University of Oxford, the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Nanjing Agricultural University looked for a “developmental switch” that regulates between root growth and shoot growth at appropriate times of rice plant development. Plants need shoots for energy production through photosynthesis and roots to collect necessary nutrients from the soil, including nitrogen. All of this happens before a plant finally switches into seed growth.
As an aside, many Flagler County residents intuitively know of this switching process, as they can see that if they cut their St. Augustine lawn too low, the grass has to switch limited nutrients away from root growth so as to promote repair and regrowth of the scalped shoots. The scalped plants cannot generate enough photosynthetic energy to grow both roots and shoots at the same time. The root system weakens over time and continual lawn scalping can eventually damage the entire lawn.
I am unconvinced that I completely understand the process described in the article, but here goes.
Researchers looked for an allele that regulates the switch that promotes affixing of comparatively high quantities of nitrogen to roots growing in low nitrogen soils.
Studying 3,000 rice “cultivars”, the researchers located the switch they sought, named WRINKLED1a, and found the plants that best affixed the most nitrogen by way of the allele regulator to the root system. While not named in the article, the team likely used CRISPR to genetically manipulate the allele switch into those rice plants that did not absorb much nitrogen from low-nitrogen soil. After three seasons of study, rice plants in low-nitrogen soil yielded on average 23.7% more rice. In high-nitrogen soil, plant yield increased by 19.9%.
The researchers’ goal was not just to increase the rate of affixing soil nitrogen to roots; they wanted to create a plant that leads to stronger plant growth balanced between root and shoot, i.e., a “healthy constant root to shoot ratio”, even where soil nitrogen levels vary. Such a balanced plant would require smaller amounts of expensive synthetic fertilizers, cutting cost inputs.
Said a researcher to the reporter:
“Our study clearly shows that this regulator is a promising target for sustainable crop improvement. It was extraordinary to see the difference that the improved version of the gene had on rice yields during our field trials.”
Make of this what you will.