So far it’s not as bad as 2019 in Palm Beach County. But, it’s pretty bad. The Sargassum bloom is out of control again. This is in Ocean Ridge, Florida.
Sargassum is a seaweed that can accumulate along the shoreline in large amounts, making the shoreline inaccessible for swimming, boating, and other recreational activities. This beach seaweed overflow is happening again.
If you live near the coast and have experienced the beach seaweed overflow in the past, then you already know what to do! Be sure to check out our site for more information on this and other coastal issues!
See the feature story I did in 2019 when it was really bad in Florida, the Caribbean, and South and Central American coasts:
Tadej Pogačar’s six-week program of recovery from his Liège-Bastogne-Liége crash and injury may still include a spell of altitude training from mid-May to early June, Belgian newspaper Het Laatste Nieuws reports.
After a busy and highly-successful first part of the season, the Slovenian star had always planned to use the next two months as his build-up for the 2023 Tour de France, with a repeat of just one stage race, the low-key Tour of Slovenia, on his program prior to July.
There had been fears that the scaphoid fracture (wrist) caused by his crash in Liège-Bastogne-Liège could have seriously affected that process.
But according to the Belgian newspaper report, citing team sports manager Joxean Fernandez Matxín, Pogačar could yet be training as planned at an altitude camp by mid-May.
On his way to another Tour de France win even with this setback?
Eleven-time world champion Kelly Slater missed the World Surf League tour’s mid-season cut Saturday in a blow that could spell the end of his more than three-decade career.
The 51-year-old American, widely regarded as the greatest professional surfer of all time, was eliminated in the round of 32 at the Margaret River Pro in Western Australia.
It meant he finished outside the top 22 halfway through the season to miss the cut, a contentious new concept introduced in 2022 to slim down the field.
He can no longer compete on the top level championship tour unless he is offered a wild card for the back half of the year. Alternatively, he could surf the second-tier challenger series, or retire.
“It is what it is. Let’s see how things turn out,” the Florida-born Slater said on the WSL website after his elimination, adding that he was not sure about his plans.
I’ve been up today since, you guessed it… 4:48 AM. Thank you Florida state government Emergency Response Team.
The governor is pissed. So am I and a lot of others throughout Florida because the alarm went out to every cellphone in the state.
But, I’ll bet the coffee companies are happy because of the millions of Floridians that couldn’t go back to sleep and just got up and got coffee. We’ll need some more between 2 and 3 PM this afternoon to stay awake beyond dinner.
Officials apologize after ‘Emergency Alert’ test sent in ‘error.’
Typically, only a few agencies have the ability to request and send out emergency notifications to cell phones, and they’re usually for imminent situations, such as severe weather warnings, an AMBER Alert for a missing child, public safety alerts, or a national emergency.
Hours later, the Florida Division of Emergency Management (FDEM) apologized for the incident in a tweet, and said the Emergency Alert System (EAS) notification was part of a monthly test, but that it was supposed to air on TV, not cell phones.
Florida Governor DeSantis’ press secretary @BryanDGRiffin says “party responsible” for 4:45 a.m. emergency alert will be fired, “This morning’s 4:45AM SERT test alert was not appropriate and not done at our direction. The party responsible will be held accountable and appropriately.”
Twitter is Lit Up
“ICYMI: Florida‘s got its feathers ruffled today because at 4:45am the EAS decided to send a TEST to our phones. All of our phones. All of them. We are grumpy.”
“To whoever decided to do a test of Florida’s Emergency Alert System at 4:45 a.m.: I hope you step on a Lego. Jerk.”
“On the night my sister’s six-month-old was actually sleeping through the night for the first time. She’s out for blood.”
“The only thing the state of Florida achieved with this 4:43am emergency alert test was helping people find out how to turn alerts off, probably at the expense of all other alerts including AMBER alerts.”
And Then… the Cool Huge Rocket Blew Up
SpaceX Starship launches
SpaceX Starship blows up at about a minute into the launch just as it tried to separate stages.
The giant rocket started to spin weirdly and wiggle, then… BOOM!
Geek wording for an explosion of SpaceX Starship today: “Starship experienced a rapid unscheduled disassembly before stage separation,” SpaceX said in a statement on Twitter.
A British library waived a $52,400 fee for a book that had been overdue — for 58 years.
In 1964, then-17-year-old David Hickman checked out “The Law for Motorists” from the Dudley Library before a court visit over a minor traffic violation,the Express & Star reported.
When the former Dudley resident moved to London in 1970, he brought the book with him.
A customer at a taqueria on the southwest side of Houston shot and killed a would-be armed robber, according to video released by the Houston Police Department. The customer reportedly gathered the money taken by the robbery suspect and distributed it back to the victims before leaving the restaurant.
Brownie Bytes 