A Coastal Flood Advisory runs until 3 p.m. today, and the high rip current risk holds through Sunday evening. The week's king tides are down to minor now: the Fernandina Beach gauge tops out at 12:55 this afternoon, 1:55 Saturday and 1:57 Sunday, each a little lower than the day before, with lots and the usual low streets the only places likely to get wet. Saturday is 75 on the island and 77 to 79 across the river under clouds, with a 40 to 50 percent shower chance from mid-morning on and an east wind gusting to 25. Halloween night itself is cloudy and 67 with only a small chance of a shower. Sunday is the wet one everywhere: showers likely after 2 p.m., 73 on the island, and a thunderstorm possible in the evening. The surf is for looking at all weekend, not swimming.

If you have lived here for years and still have not done the Amelia Island Museum of History's ghost tour, tonight is the night the calendar built for it. The museum runs it every Friday at 6: a guide walks you about 14 blocks of the historic district in roughly an hour, cobblestones and all, telling the island's ghost stories along the way. You meet in front of the cemetery behind St. Peter's Episcopal, not at the museum, and you are done in time for dinner downtown. This is the kind of thing visitors do on their first weekend and locals never get around to, and a cloudy Friday night at the end of October is as good as the setting gets. If you want the indoor half first, the museum itself is free from 4 to 6 on Fridays, two blocks away at 233 S. Third St., and then you walk over to St. Peter's for 6. Tickets are $15 for adults and $10 for kids, at the museum or online; the museum asks you to check its Facebook page for any last-minute change, so do that before you drive over.

📍 Meet at 801 Atlantic Ave., in front of the cemetery behind St. Peter's Episcopal • Fridays 6 p.m.; about an hour, roughly 14 blocks, some cobblestone • $15 adults, $10 children; ameliamuseum.org/ghost-tour or (904) 261-7378

The excavator got its first bite Wednesday morning. The Observer posted a gallery from the foot of Centre Street just before noon as the teardown of Brett's Waterway Cafe began, and the News-Leader reported Thursday that a crowd gathered on the waterfront to watch; its first line was that workers in reflective vests gave the signal, and it was time. The two-day delay changed nothing about the plan. The building comes apart in small pieces from the land side out over the river, over 20 to 30 days, because a video survey found steel beams missing underneath, so the contractor works from above rather than put anyone in the water. Brett's served its last customers on Oct. 4, 2025, after 41 years on the pier, and the city's $9.66 million marina contract covers the demolition, a new bulkhead, 60-plus pilings and a public pier. What replaces it is a public pier and a rebuilt marina, not another restaurant.

The flooding on Front Street and, this time, on Eighth Street at Alachua and Broome had two causes, the Observer's nature columnist writes this morning: the full moon lining up sun, moon and Earth, and a nor'easter that pushed the tides nearly two feet above the predictions. Her column is about who else noticed. Flocks of white ibis, the mature white ones and the darker juveniles, worked the new puddles on island streets because flooding brings insects to the surface. Clapper and king rails, the thin birds that live unseen in the spartina, got pushed to the marsh edges where people can see them, which is bad timing, since Florida's marsh hen hunting season runs to Nov. 9. The sea turtles, she notes, were mostly hatched and gone before the water came, and the hunter's moon that did all this has a Halloween footnote of its own.

The county grew 18.6 percent between 2020 and 2025, the seventh-fastest rate in Florida, and the "Let's Listen: Healing the Great Divides" series has booked Sunday, Nov. 22, 3 to 5 p.m. at Story & Song for a community conversation called "Coping with Change: Defining Progress." County Commissioner John Martin and Brandy Carvalho, the county's director of strategic advancement and economic resources, will walk through Vision 2050, the county's roadmap for housing, roads, schools and utilities, and take questions on Amendment 3 and data centers. It is free, and the series, now in its tenth month, asks you to register through Story & Song. It lands three weeks after the election and three days before the county's data center committee is due to deliver its final report.

The clocks fall back Sunday, and sunset lands at 5:38 for the first time since winter. What is your standing plan for the dark-by-dinner months: the sunset spot you drive to, the early walk, the Friday fish fry, the porch and a blanket? Hit reply and let us know. We read every response.

Florida's Legislature voted to stop changing the clocks back in 2018, and the governor signed it. So why does your phone still fall back an hour Sunday morning?

Answer: Because Florida's Sunshine Protection Act only takes effect if Congress allows it. The federal Uniform Time Act of 1966 lets a state opt out of daylight time altogether, which is what Arizona and Hawaii do, but not stay on it year-round. The U.S. Senate passed a national version by unanimous consent in March 2022 and the House never took it up; this July the House passed its own, 308 to 117, and now it is the Senate that has not acted. Until both chambers agree in the same Congress, the law Rick Scott signed sits waiting, and the clocks move.

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