Thank you to the Hunt Family and their contribution on this crucial matter!! Kansas City Star

There are ZERO tropical storms, tropical depressions or hurricanes headed to the United States.  This headline couldn't be more wrong! This is the media at its worst.  Please rest easy tonight!

As it was time for downsizing, our home is for sale.  You can see the Zillow listing here . It is on the Willowbend golf course with a large lot and terrific views (below). Our agent is here .  From our Wichita backyard There is a custom train layout in the attic room that any family with children will love. I even left a train (O gauge, Lionel). Wichita has been receiving some nice publicity lately which I only learned about late last week.  And..... Note that Tony prefers living in Wichita over Austin. In fact, I've had several former Austin residents tell me that Wichita = "Austin Without the Hassle."  So, if you are thinking of relocating, Wichita and our house are a great choice, especially if you have a family. The cost of living is very low. 

I read an on-the-money Substack this morning pertaining to the anti-social behavior of Deanne Criswell and Alejandro Mayorkas and their FEMA/DHS hangers-on in the wake of Helene and Milton. It is Tell Me How This Ends  by Chris Bray. Some excerpts: There are jobs that put people in daily contact with misery and despair and spiraling disorder, and all of the people who work in those jobs favor an affect of something that looks like boredom. If you’re an emergency room nurse or a homicide detective, you’re going to talk to people who sob and scream. They’re scared and in pain, so they’re in a state of emotional dysregulation. The worst day of their lives is your Tuesday shift. You know this, so you don’t descend into emotional dysregulation with them. You’re the person whose role is to enter disorder and make some degree of order. So the disgusting performances of FEMA director Deanne Criswell and her boss, the relentlessly gormless* Alejandro Mayorkas, are pathological in a way that I h

In the last 24 hours, we've both purchases of Warnings: The True Story of How Science Tamed the Weather   and of my photography .  If you have benefited from the hurricane coverage the past two weeks, supporting the blog via purchases of my books or licensing my photos is appreciated. 

This is from an author and college professor. It is essential reading. America, if we wish to continue to be the "land of the free," has no other choice this  election.  M. C. Armstrong @mcarmystrong To @TheDemocrats , This is my career suicide note, but it’s also a thank you from someone who is done with careerism. I’m a lifelong member of your party and I’m voting for Donald Trump. Why? It’s not just your industrial-scale censorship or your endless wars or the fact that you disenfranchised millions of Kennedy voters through lawfare. If that were all I had, it would be sufficient, in terms of conscience and rage, but there’s more to this story than anger. Your hatred and censorship has taught me to admire @realDonaldTrump and to love my fellow working-class Americans, and for that I thank you. This vote is for all the traumatized people who have been canceled and banished just for saying no to the establishment. This vote is for the surveyor, the farmer, the HVAC man, th

The National Hurricane Center did an extraordinary job with Milton. Thank you very much!!! I'm borrowing this from Fox 5. Twelve miles.  Absolutely extraordinary. And, we should thank God it wasn't 18 miles farther north. That would have taken it up the mouth of Tampa Bay. The damage to the south would have been virtually the same but the damage in the Tampa area -- already bad -- would have been catastrophic.

Milton is out in the Atlantic. About ten million people  are without power.  I'm sure Samaritan's Purse or the Salvation Army would greatly appreciate your donation!

With nearly 5 million people  without power, that is going to be the end of our coverage tonight. 

The power outages as of 9pm. This works out to 2.5 to 3 million people.  The eye is inland with the highest winds over Tampa Bay. Fortunately, the eye came in about 20 miles south of the mouth of the Bay -- which makes the storm far less damaging than it would have been.  10 foot storm surge at Sarasota! Major storm surge flooding at Naples. The NOAA tide gauge at north Naples shows major  flooding, perhaps record flooding, occurring with the storm surge. 

iPhones: Upload iOS18 to enable satellite texting if you lose ground-based cell service. Here's more: SpaceX @SpaceX In addition to the thousands (>10k) of Starlink kits we are delivering in response to Hurricane Helene, the @Starlink team and @TMobile activated our Direct to Cell satellites to provide emergency alerts for all phones and carriers of those in affected areas. The @FCC has also rapidly approved emergency special temporary authority for coverage in Florida ahead of Hurricane Milton. We have now enabled basic texting (SMS) for those on T-Mobile phones in hurricane affected areas. Text messages have already been sent and received. You can text loved ones, text 911 and continue to receive emergency alerts. If a phone connects to a Starlink satellite, it will have 1 to 2 bars of signal and show "T-Mobile SpaceX" in the network name. Users may have to manually retry text messages if they don't go through at first, as this is being delivered on a b