Gulf Coast Media

The Alabama Department of Environmental Management and the Alabama Department of Public Health have lifted swim advisories at three popular swimming areas in Baldwin County, as of Wednesday June 10, after high levels of bacteria were found in the waters during routine testing late last week.

Resampling of the areas occurred on Monday, June 8, and met the EPA’s threshold for health and safety for recreational waters according to a data set on the agency’s website.

When tested last week, both the Orange Street Pier in Fairhope and Gulf State Park Pavilion Beach in Gulf Shores recorded the highest levels of enterococcus, a f***l matter indicating bacteria, in more than 20 years, while Fairhope Municipal Park recorded its highest levels of the bacteria since April of 2025.

ADEM, in cooperation with the Alabama Department of Public Health (ADPH), has been monitoring public recreation sites along the Alabama Gulf Coast since 1999 and now testing 26. Publicly available testing data on the agency’s website goes back to January 2006.

More coverage at the link in our bio.

📷: Micah Green / Gulf Coast Media

“I think the biggest thing is that this is a service for folks who want to learn more about cheese,” Fairhope Cheese Post owner Mallory Scyphers said. “It’s not necessarily a charcuterie board business, though that’s super useful and I want to build that and grow that part of it, but it is learning about new cheeses that you might not be able to get from a grocery store.”

Describing her business as a “mobile cheese monger,” The Fairhope Cheese Post is a subscription cheese delivery service, in which each delivery includes three handpicked artisanal cheeses, accompanied by a box of crackers and other items chosen to work with the cheese such as cured meat or a fruit preserve. They are packed into a cooler bag with instructions detailing each cheese and recommendations on what to pair it with. Scyphers delivers them to customers within Mobile and Baldwin counties on the first week of every month.

Read the full story at the link in our bio.

✍️ & 📷: Colin James / Gulf Coast Media

🌧️ As South Alabama heads into its rainy summer and hurricane season, residents are already coming off one of the wettest Mays ever recorded.

According to the National Weather Service in Mobile, the city received 17.99 inches of rain during May, making it the rainiest May on record and breaking the previous mark of 15.08 inches set in 1980. In a typical year, Mobile receives about 5.4 inches of rain during the month, meaning this May delivered more than three months’ worth of normal rainfall in just 31 days.

The heavy rainfall was widespread across South Alabama. Data compiled largely through the Community Collaborative Rain, Hail and Snow Network, or CoCoRaHS, showed much of Baldwin County received well above-normal rainfall. County averages exceeded 11 inches, while parts of northern Baldwin County picked up between 15 and 20 inches during the month.

Mobile is typically already one of the wettest cities in the United States.

Joe Maniscalco, an NWS-Mobile meteorologist, told GCM last fall why Baldwin County’s rainfall can be so intense and unpredictable.

“In the summertime, with the [Mobile] bay and the Gulf, we have temperature differences between the water and the land,” he said. “When the land heats up, you’re going to get what we call a sea and bay breeze. And those are boundaries, and when they develop, they can be a source for thunderstorm development over Baldwin County.”

Read the full story at the link in our bio.

✍️: Gabriella Chavez, Report for America Corps Member / GCM Staff Journalist
📷: NWS Mobile/Pensacola

Bay Minette Mayor Joshua Brown will host a series of community district meetings throughout June alongside city council members and the city's new police chief.

The programming is meant to give residents an opportunity to meet local leaders, receive community updates and discuss questions or concerns.

"Community conversations like this haven’t happened in many years, and the city is excited to create more opportunities for residents to stay informed, involved and connected," according to an announcement posted on the City of Bay Minette page.

Details below on dates, locations and participating city leaders.

✍: Whisper Vaughn-Edwards

The Alabama Department of Environmental Management issued advisories late last week for three popular swimming areas in Baldwin County due to high levels of bacteria, and as of Monday, June 8, they each remain active. Resampling is expected today.

Both the Orange Street Pier in Fairhope and Gulf State Park Pavilion Beach recorded the highest levels of enterococcus, a f***l indicator bacteria, in more than 20 years of testing, while Fairhope Municipal Park recorded its highest levels of the bacteria since April of 2025.

ADEM, in cooperation with the Alabama Department of Public Health (ADPH), has been monitoring public recreation sites along the Alabama Gulf Coast since 1999 and now tests 25 sites in Baldwin and Mobile Counties. Publicly available testing data on the agency’s website goes back to January 2006.

The Environmental Protection Agency considers water safe for swimming in coastal areas when the bacteria count is below 104 Most Probable Number of bacteria per 100 mL of water (

Between managing high-stakes marketing campaigns and raising three sons in Spanish Fort, Jenni Dixon also recently found time to rally support from her community for a good cause.

Dixon advanced to the national quarterfinals of the Super Mom 2026 Competition, placing 14th. This event, operated by Colossal and hosted by Heidi Klum, celebrates motherhood while raising awareness and funds for Children’s Miracle Network Hospital, a nonprofit partnership that has raised more than $14.9 million through the competition to date.

While the competition offers a $20,000 prize and a family vacation, Dixon said her motivation was rooted in a career spent supporting health care professionals.

“A competition like this is not normally something I would do,” Dixon said. “I’m fairly outgoing, but I don’t usually post and get in competitions and stuff like this a lot. But really, it was the Children’s Miracle Network Connection for me.”

Dixon’s husband, Kevin, who serves as the city horticulturist for Loxley, said her drive to help others is a defining characteristic of her personality.

"Jenni has always been someone who wants to make a difference, even in small ways," Kevin Dixon said. "Through her work, she developed a tremendous respect for health care professionals and the families they serve. What drew her to this competition was not the title or recognition, but the opportunity to support Children's Miracle Network and help raise awareness for an organization that helps families during some of their most difficult moments. That's just who she is."

✍: Emma Parvin / Gulf Coast Media
📸: Courtesy of Jeni Dixon

City of Daphne is considering a moratorium that would temporarily pause multifamily residential developments.

According to documents, the moratorium would apply to “any application for rezoning, pre-zoning, site plan approval, master plan approval, planned development approval or other development approval for any new multi-family residential development” within the city’s corporate limits. These include apartments, townhomes, condominiums, duplexes and “similar residential developments containing more than one dwelling unit on a single lot or unified development site.”

City officials said if approved, the moratorium would last six months.

Daphne hasn’t enacted a moratorium on residential developments since September 2021, when city council voted to impose a six-month pause on rezoning applications for apartments, mid-rise condominiums, townhomes and PUDs that included multifamily residences. The moratorium was then extended for an additional six months in March 2022.

✍: Colin James / Gulf Coast Media

It's been six seasons since a strong, incredibly slow-moving Category 2 hurricane crawled ashore in Gulf Shores.

Now, there is the potential for a storm of the same name to make the kind of waves we don't want to see in south Alabama.

The National Hurricane Center, which is responsible for the Atlantic Basin, uses six lists to name a disturbance that intensifies into a tropical storm. The separate set is used each year and rotates back to the first one once all are used. That means the list used for the 2020 hurricane season, which included Hurricane Sally, is the one being used this year.

A storm's name can be retired if it is "so deadly or costly that the future use of its name for a different storm would be inappropriate for reasons of sensitivity," according to NWS.

If that occurs, the World Meteorological Organization committee votes to replaces the name with another and strikes the "offending name" from the list.

The Alabama Gulf Coast's two other hurricanes of lore, Frederic in 1979 and Ivan in 2004, which was previously the most recent named storm to make landfall on the Alabama Gulf Coast, are both retired. The three that were retired from Sally's year are Laura, Eta and Iota.

In 2020, there were so many named storms that NWS had to start using the Greek alphabet after going through the complete list of rotating names. Now, there is an alternate name list to be used in such a busy season rather than Greek letters.

Hurricane Sally was responsible for four direct fatalities, including one in the Wolf Bay area of Baldwin County, two in Escambia County, Florida, and one near Atlanta, Georgia. There were also five indirect fatalities, including one in Foley, one in Baldwin County, one in Pensacola and two in Georgia.

According to RHI and NWS, Sally caused a national total of $7.3 billion in damage.

✍: Kayla Green / Gulf Coast Media

Orange Beach City Council met on Tuesday, June 2, where The Wharf Landing project took a step forward while Pirates Voyage took another step back.

During the meeting, the proposed Pirates Voyage project was deferred for a third and final time by the applicant. A public hearing and first reading before city council will now take place on July 21.

With the deferral, the project will once again have to be discussed by the planning commission before it can move to a city council vote. Although it was listed as part of the June 8 planning commission agenda, Ford Handley, city administrator and finance director, told GCM that it will likely be discussed at a future planning commission meeting to be determined.

As previously reported by GCM, the proposed development would rezone more than 24 acres along Orange Beach Boulevard for a planned unit development for a 59,000-square-foot Pirates Voyage dinner theater during its initial phase. The proposal drew widespread public opposition at a town hall meeting last month over concerns about traffic, drainage, environmental impacts and compatibility with nearby neighborhoods.

As for other developments, Orange Beach City Council adopted an ordinance rezoning 28 acres in the Margaritaville planned unit development from general business to single-family residential for a new subdivision called The Wharf Landing, which will include 142 lots with houses ranging from two to five bedrooms.

The new residential district is part of a larger Margaritaville Resort project located across the Intracoastal Waterway from The Wharf shopping and entertainment district.

✍: Colin James / Gulf Coast Media