The Storm Went East. Now Comes the Good Part.

Good Thursday morning from The Seawall.

Last Thursday we told you to fuel the cars, move the patio furniture and take the pictures. Then the storm went to Florida. We'd make the same call again.

Here's the ledger, and it's the government's own. The National Weather Service's post-storm report for Hurricane Isaias records, for the Mississippi coast: no tornadoes. No deaths. Every rainfall total under three inches. The strongest gust on land was 54 miles an hour at the Pascagoula airport. Isaias came ashore near Destin as a Category 2, and by 10:32 Friday night every warning here had been cancelled.

A hurricane turned a weekend into a wet Friday. We'll take that trade every time, and the mild embarrassment with it.

The best line of the week came from Carolyn Boyd, down in Ocean Springs for Cruisin' with thirty of her family, talking to WLOX: "We started praying that it would go a different direction and it did."

Now the part worth getting out of bed for. A cold front crosses this coast Friday night, and it's bringing the first honest fall weekend of the year — Saturday in the low seventies, Saturday night down around fifty-four, and essentially no rain in the forecast. The National Weather Service in New Orleans calls it "a fairly strong cold front" bringing "our first real taste of fall."

One thing for this morning before you go anywhere: there's a Dense Fog Advisory out for all three counties until 11 a.m., with visibility down to a quarter mile in spots. Headlights on, and leave room.

Full guide below — plus an open house in Diamondhead on Sunday, and a stray hound out of Ocean Springs who can clear a four-foot fence.

There's a particular kind of October morning here where you step outside and the air has changed overnight and you stand a second longer than you meant to, holding the door. It usually shows up the third week of the month. It's showing up Saturday.

One forecast for the whole coast, from NWS New Orleans.

Today — Fog early, then sunny, high near 83. ⚠️ A Dense Fog Advisory runs until 11 a.m. for all three counties — visibility a quarter mile or less in places.

Friday, October 16 — Mostly sunny, high near 84, west wind 5 to 10. Summer's last day, and it goes out warm.

Friday night — The front crosses. Partly cloudy, low around 57, northwest wind 5 to 25 mph. You'll feel the wind swing before you feel the temperature.

Saturday, October 17 — Sunny, high near 72, north wind 20 to 25 mph. Twelve degrees cooler than Friday, and the wind is coming off the land instead of the water for once.

Saturday night — Mostly clear, low around 54. The coldest night this coast has had since spring, and the first one that needs a jacket on the porch.

Sunday, October 18 — Sunny, high near 73, northeast wind around 15.

On the water: the front brings "strong northerly winds and rapid building seas," with small craft advisories likely through the weekend and gale conditions possible on the offshore waters late Friday into Saturday. If you have a boat, today and Friday morning are your window.

In the tropics: nothing in the Gulf, and the only Atlantic area NHC is watching sits off Cabo Verde at 20 percent through seven days.

Bottom line: fog this morning, a warm still Friday, the front overnight, then two days about as good as this coast gets. Saturday is breezy enough to hold your hat on. No weather excuse available to you this weekend.

🧹 Mississippi Coastal Cleanup · Saturday, 8–10 a.m. · five Harrison County sites — the Biloxi Lighthouse, D'Iberville Marina, Jones Park in Gulfport, Long Beach Harbor and Pass Christian Harbor · supplies provided · The annual shoreline cleanup, eight days after a hurricane pushed water onto this coast and pulled it back out. Of everything on this list, this is the one we'd put you on.

⚔️ 40th Annual Fall Muster · Biloxi · Saturday and Sunday · Beauvoir, 2244 Beach Blvd. · $20 adults, $7 ages 6–17, under 5 free · Reenactors camped on the grounds, with a battle reenactment at 2 p.m. both days. Beauvoir says the full schedule posts Friday.

🕯 20th Annual Old Biloxi Cemetery Tour · Sunday, 2–4 p.m. · Old Biloxi Cemetery on Irish Hill Drive · Free · Self-guided, with fourteen costumed characters at eleven stops. This year's theme is "Where Royalty Rests." Volunteers cleared the overgrowth themselves earlier this month.

🎃 Diamondhead Fall Fest · Saturday, 10 a.m.–3 p.m. · Town Green at City Hall, 5000 Diamondhead Circle · Free · About seventy vendors, food trucks, a DJ, face painting and a petting zoo. Worth knowing: the city took this over this year after the property owners association stepped back, so City Manager Jon McCraw is calling it "our first annual Fall Fest." If your memory says The Club, your memory is a year out of date.

👻 Boo in the Bay Parade · Bay St. Louis · Saturday, steps off 5:30 p.m., running to about 9 · Old Town · The seventh annual family Halloween parade, with Jeeps, golf carts and classic cars welcome to register and ride.

🐟 36th Annual Gautier Mullet & Music Festival · Saturday, 9 a.m.–5 p.m. · The Sound Amphitheater, 3855 Dolphin Dr. · The big one, and it has moved — this is the festival's first year at The Sound. ⚠️ The entertainment lineup was still "coming soon" as of Monday and admission isn't published. A thirty-six-year-old mullet festival in a new amphitheater is worth the uncertainty.

🎪 Jackson County Fair · opens Sunday · Fairgrounds, 2902 Shortcut Rd., Pascagoula · General admission free, ride tickets $1, armbands around $20 at certain times · ⚠️ The county hasn't published 2026 gate times and sources disagree on the closing date, so we're printing neither. 228-762-6043.

🏃 Ocean Springs Rotary 5K · Saturday · Fort Maurepas, 499 Front Beach Dr. · kids' half-mile 6:15 p.m., 5K at 7 p.m. · $35 adults, $15 ages 12 and under · A certified course along front beach and over the bridge. A night race on the first properly cool evening of the year, which is about as good as running gets here.

📖 Words & Wonder: Storyteller Spotlight · Ocean Springs · Saturday, 10–11 a.m. · Walter Anderson Museum of Art, 510 Washington Ave. · Free · Selena John, of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, tells the audience about her tribe and shares her favorite folk tales. The museum is free to walk afterward, and there's a companion session Friday at the same hour for little ones.

Friday — The Doobie Brothers with Michael McDonald, Mississippi Coast Coliseum, 2350 Beach Blvd., Biloxi. ⚠️ The start time is genuinely in dispute — Live Nation says 8 p.m., three other listings say 7. Get there at seven. · Flo Rida, Beau Rivage Theatre, 875 Beach Blvd., Biloxi, 8 p.m. · Better Than Ezra, Hard Rock Live, 777 Beach Blvd., Biloxi, 8 p.m. · Deana Carter, Trent Lott Theatre at the Mary C. O'Keefe, 1600 Government St., Ocean Springs, 7:30 p.m.

Saturday — ⭐ Morgan Freeman's Symphonic Blues Experience, presented by the Mississippi Gulf Coast Symphony, the iMPAC at MGCCC's Harrison County campus, 409 Debuys Rd., Gulfport, 7:30 p.m. · Grand Funk Railroad, Studio A at the IP, Biloxi, 8 p.m. · The Notre Dame Glee Club, Cathedral of the Nativity BVM, 870 Howard Ave., Biloxi, 7:30 p.m. ⚠️ The Glee Club's page carries no year and the cathedral doesn't list it — call before you dress for it.

⚠️ No face-value prices on any of it — every box office we tried blocks us or routes to a platform that does. The resale figures floating around are not prices. Buy from the venue.

Compressed this week, because the marquee is carrying the weekend. All free, all 21+.

Silver Slipper, Bay St. Louis — The Bad Sandys Friday, Black Velvet Saturday, Stage Bar, both 7–11. Nothing Sunday.

Island View, Gulfport — STARZ at the Stage Bar, Anderson Domingues at the Sunset Bar, both Friday and Saturday.

Hard Rock, Biloxi — Contraflow at Center Bar Saturday 9, DJ Doc Roc both nights, karaoke at Roadhouse 777 Saturday.

Ground Zero Blues Club, 814 Howard Ave., Biloxi — Mathias Lattin, Friday 7 p.m., from $22.35, under 18 with a parent · Layla Musselwhite Band, Saturday 7 p.m. · dark Sunday.

Sugarcane Jane at The Shed BBQ & Blues Joint, 7501 Hwy 57, Ocean Springs — Saturday 6 p.m., free. Anthony Crawford and Savana Lee, husband and wife, two voices and a couple of instruments, in a barbecue joint, for nothing.

The Sanctuary, 156 Camellia St., Biloxi — an Elton John tribute Friday, "Almost Taylor" Saturday, both 6 p.m. Door price goes up five dollars.

100 Men Hall has nothing until Mike Zito on October 30. Levitt AMP Moss Point is dark between October 3 and Halloween. The Coliseum, Beau Rivage Theatre and Hard Rock Live are all Friday-only.

And Sunday night is empty. Not thin — empty. We could not find one confirmed live act in the three counties; everything that surfaced was in Mobile or New Orleans. Sunday is for the Fall Muster, the cemetery tour, the fair, the open house and your porch.

Morgan Freeman's Symphonic Blues Experience — Saturday, 7:30 p.m., the iMPAC, Gulfport.

Morgan Freeman tracing the Delta blues with a full orchestra behind him, on a community college stage in Gulfport. It's been sitting on this newsletter's Coming Up list for weeks and it's finally here — and it's the one marquee show this weekend whose date, time and venue agree across every source we checked. No published price; the symphony sells through Ticketmaster, and their office is 228.896.4276.

If you book live music on this coast and you're not in here, it's usually because you only post to Facebook and we can't see it. Send us your weekend by Tuesday noon and we'll run it: [email protected]. Two in particular, because a reader asked us first — Shaggy's and Nine Toes in Pass Christian. Neither publishes a schedule we can reach.

One hundred ninety-eight Mississippi power workers drove toward the damage. With this coast essentially untouched, three South Mississippi utilities sent crews out of state: Mississippi Power put a 150-person team into Alabama, Coast Electric sent 29 to south Alabama, and Singing River Electric's 19-person crew left Sunday for DeFuniak Springs, Florida, where 65,000 meters were dark. TJ Pruitt of Mississippi Power: "We're happy to answer the call from our neighbors." — WLOX

Hollywood Casino's Hollydeck has a Seafood Shack — a marina-front seafood spot in Bay St. Louis that opened at the start of the month, and it's running weekend specials all month. Saturday and Sunday, 11 to 6 while it lasts: Gulf blue crab with corn and potatoes, $19.99. — The Sea Coast Echo

Davis Bayou is open again; the barrier islands aren't yet. The Ocean Springs unit reopened Sunday. Ship, Horn, Cat and Petit Bois were still closed as of the weekend, and the Park Service hasn't been posting updates reliably — call 228-230-4136 before you plan around a ferry.

Freddie Mac's Primary Mortgage Market Survey, released October 8:

Second weekly increase in a row, and the run is worth seeing laid out: 7.03 on September 24, 7.28 on October 1, 7.40 on October 8. That's thirty-seven hundredths of a point in two weeks, and a full 1.10 points above where this survey sat a year ago. It updates again at 11 a.m. today, after this email leaves.

Here's what that does on the ground, and I'll use my own listing rather than somebody else's, because it's the honest example. The House of the Week below came on September 24 at $355,000. On October 13 I cut it to $350,000 — nineteen days in.

That is a small cut and it was a deliberate one. Every time this survey moves up a tenth, the number of buyers who can carry a given payment gets smaller, and a seller's choice is to meet that early with a modest adjustment or late with a big one. The sellers who learn this in week three do better than the sellers who learn it in month five. I'd tell you that about your house, so I'm doing it with mine where you can watch.

Now the thing I actually want you to do this week, and it's a callback. Last Thursday I told you the National Flood Insurance Program has a thirty-day waiting period, which meant nobody here could buy coverage for Friday's storm. The storm went east. The waiting period didn't. This is the week to fix that — while last Thursday is still fresh enough to make you pick up the phone. Thirty days from today is mid-November, and hurricane season runs through the end of it. A policy bought this week covers the tail of this season and all of the next one. A policy you think about in June covers you in July.

I'm a licensed Mississippi real estate salesperson with REAL Brokerage, and a Ramsey-trained financial coach who's led Financial Peace University classes at Mosaic Church in Ocean Springs. That second part is why this section keeps being about what you can carry rather than what you can qualify for. Reply any time — www.robrecio.com. — Rob

Robert Recio · Licensed Mississippi Real Estate Salesperson #S-62221 · REAL Broker, LLC · Equal Housing Opportunity. This week's House of the Week is our own listing, as disclosed above it.

"We're looking at new construction and the builder keeps pushing their own lender. They're offering money toward closing costs if we use them. Is that a good deal or a trap?"

It's neither. It's a bid, and you should treat it like one — which means getting at least one other bid before you accept it.

Builder incentives are real money. But the incentive is attached to a loan, and that loan has a rate and fees of its own — so price the same loan somewhere else on the same day, because rates move daily and quotes from different weeks aren't a comparison. Compare the rate, the lender fees and points, using the Loan Estimate: a standardized form every lender must give you, fees on page two. Two side by side answers this in four minutes. If the incentive is $5,000 and their rate is a quarter point higher, work out what that quarter point costs over the years you'll actually hold the loan, not over thirty.

One last thing: a builder can require you to use their lender to get the incentive, and that's legal. What they can't do is require you to use their lender to buy the house at all. If anyone tells you otherwise, that's the moment to slow down.

Full disclosure, up top where it belongs: this week's house is mine. It's my own listing, and it's the third week running I've put it here instead of somebody else's. The rotation says Harrison County and I'm overriding it again, by my own choice. You deserve to know that before you read another line — and if it makes you want to skip to the dog, fair enough.

85035 Pohaku Drive, Diamondhead — $350,000

And there's an open house this Sunday, 1 to 3. No appointment, just come.

Here's the short version. A 2024 Elliott Homes "Dune" plan in Diamondhead Lakes, near the Cardinal course — four bedrooms, three full baths, 2,219 square feet — lived in about six months before it came back on the market. Primary suite down, two bedrooms split to the front, a second living area and a fourth bedroom up. Quartz counters, nine-foot ceilings, luxury vinyl plank, two-car garage, covered porches front and back. Refrigerator, washer and dryer stay.

The part I'd actually sell you on isn't the quartz. It's a house built to the 2024 code on a coast that gets audited by a hurricane every few years — heat-pump HVAC, R-38 ceiling, Low-E double-pane windows. We spent last Thursday talking about what storms do to buildings here. This is what the current answer looks like.

Three things I'd want to know if I were you, so I'm printing them myself.

One: I cut the price. It came on September 24 at $355,000 and I took it to $350,000 on October 13 — nineteen days in. That's not a fire sale, it's the lesson in the section above, applied to my own money.

Two: the builder is working the adjoining phase, so there's active construction next door. Come Sunday and you'll see it and hear it. I'd rather you find that out from me than from the driveway.

Three: the flood zone. The listing data says flood insurance isn't required here. We still have not been able to verify that independently — Diamondhead's high-numbered addresses don't resolve in any public geocoder we have, so we can't run the FEMA flood layer on this parcel the way we do for every other House of the Week. I tried again this week and it failed again. Get your own flood determination and your own elevation certificate. That's what I'd tell you on anybody's house, and I'm telling you on mine.

The numbers:

Contact: it's my listing, so call me — www.robrecio.com. And if you'd rather walk it with somebody who isn't the listing agent, that's a completely reasonable instinct and I'll say so out loud.

Dixson — Jackson County Animal Shelter, Gautier

Hound. Young — the structured record says one to three years, the shelter says about a year. Male, medium, and the shelter puts him around forty-five pounds.

He was picked up wandering the streets of Ocean Springs. Which means some of you have probably driven past this dog.

The record on him is unusually good for a stray. Petfinder's structured fields — not the write-up, the fields — have him neutered, vaccinated, good with children and good with other dogs. The shelter calls him sweet and energetic, and says he likes hiking and being outside.

Then the line that made us pick him, which the shelter prints without flinching: he could clear a four-foot fence. That's an honest shelter telling you the truth about a young hound instead of selling you one. He needs a fence he can't audition for.

Two things we won't tell you, because we can't source them. Petfinder's house-training field for Dixson reads "Unknown" — as it does for every dog on this roster — so nobody should promise you a house-broken dog. And Petfinder carries no heartworm information at all, for any animal, so ask at the counter.

The shelter: 4400 Audubon Lane, Gautier · (228) 497-6350 · Mon–Fri 10–4, Sat 10–2, closed Sunday · $50 flat, which the shelter says covers initial vaccinations, worming, a free health-exam certificate, and spay or neuter depending on age. A microchip is not on that list — ask. Applications in person.

⚠️ Confirm he's still there before you drive over. Also on the roster: Marlee (hound, spayed, vaccinated, good with kids and dogs), Leo (a thirteen-year-old Black Mouth Cur who'd like a couch), and Gonzalez (a shy one-year-old stray out of Moss Point).

The Seawall lands Thursday mornings. Forward it to somebody who'd use it.

Last Thursday this coast bought bottled water, moved the grill into the garage, and watched a hurricane go somewhere else. Saturday it'll be seventy-two and sunny with a north wind off the land, and volunteers are going to spend the first two hours of it picking trash off the shoreline in Gulfport and Pass Christian and Biloxi.

That's a pretty good week, start to finish. Go outside.

Take someone with you.

— The Seawall