Earlier this year I had mentioned that I had been blogging on Watts up with that for over 10 years straight. Because of that I felt the need to take a sabbatical this summer, and I asked readers for some help in doing that. Many, many, people generously responded with offers of help offers of visits and lodging and many other things. I’m eternally grateful to all those who have stepped up to help to keep this website running during my absence, as well as those who made my rest and relaxation possible. We added a crop of new moderators who have kept comments flowing, and I thank you for what is essentially a  thankless job. I want to give particular thanks to our own Charles the Moderator a.k.a. CTM, who has kept WUWT populated with stories while I took some much needed rest.I also want to give thanks to the many guest authors who have contributed stories and to our regular authors Eric Worrall and David Middleton who have regularly published stories here. If I’ve missed anyone, it’s not intentional.

Those of you that have been watching closely have noted that I have published a few stories this summer (when the mood struck me) as well as recently a series of stories for hurricanes Harvey and Irma, I also outlined the excellent adventure Charles and I had watching the total solar eclipse. I have to tell you that was truly the experience of a lifetime.

As of yesterday (Monday 10/2) I’m officially back and I feel good. I’m recharged and I have some fresh ideas that you’ll see taking place here on a regular basis. I also have a book in the works and another new project which I will outline at a future date that holds promise for putting climate modeling and climate modelers feet to the fire.Details on that will be forthcoming in a future post.

Amazon Deal:  44% off on Universal OBD II Scanner Car Engine Fault Code Reader

in the short term I’d like to ask our readers to take a moment to look at the sidebar and the advertisement for the Q-Lav. This is an invention of our own Charles the moderator, and I’m running this ad as a favor to him in thanks for all he has done. If readers have a need for such a device I urge you to take a moment and purchase it. He also has a very special chocolate that prevents gastrointestinal distress for people that are sensitive to certain types of sugars. It’s called Crotter’s Best.

Some of the things that you’ll see in the coming weeks:

• Some site reorganization – for example some of the reference pages are getting a bit stale due to broken links, I will be working on those
• A new front page format – the current format does not keep stories front and center very long and as a result useful conversations often get pushed out of sight. A good example is the recent story on a random walk analysis of temperature data which has scrolled off the main page after just two days.
• In-line ads from Amazon.com – (an example is above) these will be fairly unobtrusive and will link to deals of the day and lightning deals, and of course things like Climate related Books. Dr. Roy Spencer’s recent success in publishing two eBooks on Climate and Hurricanes owe their success in no small part to WUWT readers. This is a no-additional-cost way for readers to support WUWT, as it nets small percentage of each Amazon purchase.
• Regular features will return – such as “quote of the week” and “climate craziness of the week” plus some new features.
• Comment submission improvement – some comments end up flagged that should not be, some tuning is needed to keep the flow going while weeding out junk comments or comments that violate site policy

Of course, I’m open to suggestions any of you might have for making WUWT better and more effective. Leave a comment f you have an idea.

Again, my sincere thanks to everyone for all of your help, let’s make the next 10 years is even better!