Fort Walton Beach and Destin both put on their over-water fireworks displays on Friday night, July 4th this year. Both shows start at/after 9pm. The Destin display is held in Destin Harbor while the Fort Walton show is held at the Landing just west of Brooks bridge. Both shows can attract a large number of boats, so plan ahead if you’ll be using a public launch ramp and be patient and safe on the water. Read more for a local boating map…
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This weekend presents multiple opportunities for on-water fireworks viewing in the greater Fort Walton Beach and Destin area. Hurlburt Field Air Force Base kicks off the celebrations with their annual ‘Sound of Freedom’ event on Thursday, July 3rd. Fireworks start after 9pm and there is plenty of room for lots of boats to watch. Boaters should exercise caution south of the channel west of Spectre Island as depths can be quite shallow (<4 ft) in many spots. Read on for a local channel map...
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The Christmas Season is in full swing and the next few weeks will feature multiple Holiday Lighted Boat Parades in Northwest Florida.

The 1st up is the Fort Walton Beach Parade on December 2nd at 6pm at the Landing on Brooks Street.

Next is the San Destin Parade on Saturday the 8th at 6pm. The San Destin Parade is visible from Baytowne Marina and the Village at Baytowne Boardwalk.

Finally, the Destin Harbor Parade will be held on December 9th at 6pm.

Our partner website, EarthNC.com has posted a Google Earth Map with more than 50 Parade Locations across the U.S.

Light winds and cool weather combined for a great day of racing during today’s Destin World Championship Offshore races. After a 2 hour delay to replace our port engine raw water pump, we motored out to Turn 5 south of Henderson Beach State Park to watch the races and act as a volunteer Patrol Boat guarding the race course from spectator encroachment. Please click on the photo thumbnail to browse our photos from today. Besides the race boats, we captured quite a few spectator boats and of course the Angel Flight helicopters.

Nothing like a 844lb Shark to make your day when fishing. This has been a banner year for large sharks along the Emerald Coast. The story has been picked up by the national media.

Quoting the Kansas City Star:

Bruner and his fishing buddies were on a 52-foot charter boat with Capt. Robert Hill, about 70 miles southwest of this beach city in the Florida Panhandle.

The fishermen first noticed the big mako because it kept eating grouper and scamp they had hooked.

“It was like ‘Jaws,’” Hill said.

Hill hooked a two-foot amberine on as bait and tossed it out. The shark eventually hit it.

After the long fight, the shark was gaffed and eventually gave up after its tail was roped. But even then, the men could not get the big shark in the boat. They tied it to the stern with three ropes and made the four-hour trip back to land.

Be sure to link through to the article for more pictures.

Local kiteshop XLKites hosts pro rider Bill Parker this Saturday, March 3rd for the 2007 Flexifoil kite and board demo tour. The event will kickoff at the XLKite shop on Miracle Strip Parkway in downtown Ft Walton Beach at 10am. Demos will be conducted at Leeside Park on Okaloosa Island in the afternoon followed by a kiteboard race and downwider ride at 4pm. If winds are light on Saturday, the demo will be conducted Sunday morning at 9am at Leeside. For more information visit the XLKites Event page.

We’ve also made a Google Earth map which shows the location of all the events and the rough course layouts for the race and downwinder. XLkites / Flexifoil 2007 Demo Map

AJ’s Seafood and Oyster House, in Destin Harbor is hosting this year’s Destin Fishing Rodeo. The rodeo runs the entire month of October and features more than $100,000 in prizes. Entry is free for those fishing from rodeo registered charter boats. Prizes include daily winners in various categories and overall winners. They also have teen and youth divisions. October tends to be a great fishing month in the Destin area - best of luck to all of the anglers! For more information, visit the official Destin Fishing Rodeo webpage.

CNN.com offered more details and more questions about the story we reported last week about 3 Mexican fishermen found over 5000 miles from Mexicon in the Western Pacific. Quoting from the article:
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Update (28 Jan 07):

We now recommend the National Weather Service Ridge/Radar KML service for real-time warning and radar overlays for Google Earth. You can select from a wide variety of regions and overlay types using a simple menu. If you’d like a simple overlay of radar and warning data for the entire US, we have combined links to the NWS National Radar picture and NWS Warnings with our own airport weather layer.

Original Post:

The National Severe Storms Laboratry has posted a neat set of experimental weather maps using Google Earth.

You can download the full list HERE.

We particularly recommend the CONUS Radar Reflectivity (Composite) and Satellite imagery files. The CONUS Radar map divides the US into six regions - any of which can be selected for viewing. The radar maps will automatically update every 2 minutes. As of 27 Jan 06, the NSSL website seems to be having some problems with the Google Earth files. We will update this post when we have more information.

Don’t have Google Earth? You can download it free using the button below:

Use the button below to get the current version of Google Earth: