🗞️ Not sleeping well? You can probably blame the heat

🗞️ East Forsyth High has a new athletic director

🗞️ Road trip: a massive Titanic exhibition is open in Charlotte

🗞️ A new report calls on NC to end data-center tax breaks

⛅ Warm, a passing storm | High: 88°F | Low: 72°F

One more warm, muggy summer day. Look for partly sunny skies with a stray afternoon or evening thunderstorm, rain chance around 30%. Not a washout, so enjoy the Sunday, just keep an eye on the sky if you are headed outdoors, and stay hydrated out there.

If you have been tossing and turning this summer, it is not just you, and it may not be your mattress.

A new analysis from Climate Central, a nonprofit of climate scientists, found that people in the Piedmont Triad lose about 37 hours of sleep a year to heat, with roughly five of those hours tied to a warming climate. The culprit is not the blazing afternoon so much as the muggy night that never really cools off. "People might think, 75 or 80 degrees at night isn't too bad," said Ashley Ward of Duke University's Heat Policy Innovation Hub, "but overnight temperatures above 75 degrees can really drive vulnerable individuals into a health crisis."

Our warm nights really are becoming more common. Assistant state climatologist Corey Davis notes that in the entire 20th century, this part of the state had just 49 nights when the low stayed at or above 75 degrees, about one every other year. Since 2000, we have already had about 75 such nights, closer to three a year. When the body does not get a cool stretch to recover, sleep quality drops, and researchers link chronic sleep disruption to higher stress and other health effects, especially for older adults and anyone without reliable air conditioning.

The practical takeaways are simple. If you have AC, this is the season to use it, particularly for older family members and neighbors. If you do not, try to cool the bedroom before bed, run fans, hydrate, and check on folks who may be struggling in the heat. A good night's sleep is not a luxury in weather like this, it is how our bodies bounce back.

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There is a new person at the helm of Eagle athletics, and he is a familiar face.

Joe Coulter was officially named athletic director at East Forsyth High School on July 31, stepping up after five years as assistant to longtime AD Allen Plaster, who has moved on to Page High School in Greensboro. Coulter is well known around East Forsyth: he spent three years as an assistant varsity boys' basketball coach and the past two as head coach, going 27-20. "He took me under his wing and taught me a lot about the job," Coulter said of Plaster. "I do feel like I am prepared for it."

A native of Richmond, Virginia and a Barton College graduate, Coulter came to East Forsyth after 17 years as head basketball coach at Hermitage High in Richmond. He is quick to credit the program he is inheriting. "East Forsyth has a long history of being good at sports," he said. "I want them to be up there with the best and competing for state championships."

The new job is a big one, and he knows it, everything from athlete eligibility and equipment to lining up buses and painting the fields. The one hard part, he says, is stepping away from coaching the basketball team. "We have a great group of kids in our program now, and I am going to miss coaching them for sure." Congratulations to Coach Coulter, and here is to a great year for the Eagles.

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Looking for a memorable day trip before summer ends? One of the largest touring Titanic exhibitions in the country is set up just down I-85.

Titanic: The Exhibition is running through September 7 at Freedom Hall inside The Park Expo & Conference Center, 800 Briar Creek Road in Charlotte, about an hour and a half from Kernersville. Inside are more than 300 authentic artifacts alongside full-scale recreations of the ship's spaces, including first- and third-class cabins, a millionaire's suite, the boiler room, a promenade deck, and the famous Grand Staircase. It is all indoors and air-conditioned, which is no small thing in August.

What makes it stick with people is the personal touch. When you walk in, you are handed a boarding card with the name of a real Titanic passenger, and you follow that person's story through the galleries until a memorial wall reveals their fate at the end. There is also a Discovery Gallery with a glass floor over a recreated debris field, and an optional virtual-reality journey down to the wreck, which sits about two and a half miles beneath the North Atlantic. Most visitors spend 60 to 90 minutes.

A few tips if you go: entry is timed and late arrivals are not admitted, parking is paid, and food is not sold inside, so plan accordingly. Kids under four get in free. It is a moving, kid-and-grandparent-friendly way to spend an afternoon, and a chance to stand at the foot of that Grand Staircase without crossing an ocean.

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The debate over data centers is still very much alive around here, and a new report is adding fuel to it.

The left-leaning N.C. Justice Center released a report Thursday urging state lawmakers to scale back or end the tax subsidies that North Carolina has offered data-center developers since 2006, and to pause new "hyperscale" projects for two to three years while the state writes clearer rules. The report argues the incentives are a costly way to create relatively few permanent jobs, typically 50 to 150 per site, and it calls for more transparency about who gets subsidies and what they are worth. A state Commerce Department estimate cited in the piece suggests the sales-tax exemptions could cost North Carolina between $1.5 billion and $2.3 billion over the current buildout.

Supporters of the projects see it differently, and their case is worth hearing too. County leaders in places like Stokes point to tens of millions in new tax revenue that could fund schools, deputies and water and sewer lines without raising homeowners' taxes. "Stokes County desperately needs the long-term, recurring revenue," one commissioner said. A bipartisan bill this year, the Ratepayers Protection Act, tried to tighten water and energy rules and keep costs off ratepayers, but it stalled in the state Senate.

The issue has been front and center right here: Forsyth commissioners voted 5-2 in July to deny a rezoning for a proposed hyperscale data center in Rural Hall after fierce local opposition, though some said they would consider a better-suited, industrial site. With more projects proposed across the region, expect this one to keep coming back to local agendas. We will keep you posted.

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