Just my opinion

[wxwonder12]

I feel that S Florida will be ok this season and that even though there is an above average season forcasted I believe the storms will turn to the North. We may have some close calls but I don't think we will be hit. Just my opinion.

[cyclonaut]

Thats impossible to know @ this time & date.

This is South Fla,a place surrounded by very warm waters where a hurricane is always close by in any given season.To say that South Fla is safe in May is borderline crazy.

[wxwonder12]

I'm not saying it is not going to happen it is just a feeling I have that we will be lucky this year. I know Florida sticks out like a sore thumb, just think they will turn before landfall.

[SouthernWx]

wxwonder12, if you reside in the Sunshine state....that is potentially a very dangerous assumption (that the Florida peninsula will be spared this season).

There are several historical examples of back-to-back years in which major hurricanes impacted the Florida peninsula....1909-10, 1928-29, 1944-45...and between 1947 and 1950, major hurricanes struck Florida FOUR years in a row

While until 2004, peninsular Florida had enjoyed an extraordinary lull from major landfalling hurricanes since 1950 (only Donna, Betsy, and Andrew striking the peninsula between 1951-2003)....it became apparent to me it was coming to an end even before 2000. 1998 & 1999 were the first back-to-back years in which hurricanes had impacted south Florida since the mid 1960's.

Now we've witnessed the onslaught of two major landfalling canes into the peninsula last season (and Frances was almost a major cane at landfall). Instead of Floridians burying their heads in the sand and expecting another long period without a powerful hurricane, they'd be well advised to look at the past regarding major landfalling hurricanes; and I mean the past BEFORE 1951.

Major landfalling hurricanes seem to occur in cycles....one such major hurricane cycle has just ended IMO for the Carolinas (from 1984 to 2003). Before that, the Gulf Coast states were the bullseye between 1961-1983....where most of the intense landfalling hurricanes slammed ashore. Between 1951 and 1960, the hurricane cycle targeted the U.S. east coast from South Carolina to New England (**Donna in 1960 an outlier, as was Audrey into Louisiana in 1957**).....not since 1950 has the cycle of major landfalling hurricanes targeted the area of America MOST LIKELY to be impacted (historically) by a major hurricane: the Florida peninsula.

Look at the last major landfalling hurricane cycle to affect the Florida peninsula....between 1919 and 1950:

Sep 1919....cat-4 (Keys)
Oct 1921....cat-3 (Tampa Bay)
Sep 1926....cat-4 (Miami/Ft Lauderdale to Naples/Fort Myers)
Sep 1928....cat-4 (Palm Beach)
Sep 1929....cat-3 (Keys/south Dade)
Sep 1933....cat-3 (Ft Lauderdale/Palm Beach)
Sep 1935....cat-5 (Keys; lower SW Coast)
Oct 1944....cat-3 (Sarasota to Fort Myers)
Sep 1945....cat-3/4 (Miami/Homestead)
Sep 1947....cat-4 (Miami to Palm Beach)
Sep 1948....cat-3 (Keys/ SW Coast)
Aug 1949....cat-3 (Ft Lauderdale/Palm Beach)
Sep 1950....cat-3 (Cedar Key to Tarpon Springs)
Oct 1950....cat-3 (Miami/Ft Lauderdale)

Fourteen (14) major landfalling hurricanes in a 32 year period; including several large cat-4 monsters and one compact mini-monster cat-5 (1935 Labor Day hurricane).

I honestly hope and pray I'm wrong, but am afraid we may all look back in 20 or 30 years and realize 2004 was minor in comparism to what hell-on-earth is coming to Florida.
As destructive and stressful as Charley, Frances, and Jeanne were...IMO their combined impact pales in comparism to the financial and emotional impact one monstrously large cat-4 or cat-5 making a direct hit into a densely populated metropolitan area will create (i.e.- a repeat of the 1926 Great Miami hurricane).

This isn't guesswork or black magic.....it's called tropical cyclone climatology. Peninsular Florida, particularly the southern half is historically the most likely area of America to be impacted by a severe hurricane; as much America's "hurricane alley" as Oklahoma and Kansas are "tornado alley". Until 2004, the past several decades had been famine regarding major hurricanes in southern Florida....I'm very afraid the next feast is now underway

PW

[jabber]

I am gonna have to move


I honestly hope and pray I'm wrong, but am afraid we may all look back in 20 or 30 years and realize 2004 was minor in comparism to what hell-on-earth is coming to Florida.
As destructive and stressful as Charley, Frances, and Jeanne were...IMO their combined impact pales in comparism to the financial and emotional impact one monstrously large cat-4 or cat-5 making a direct hit into a densely populated metropolitan area will create (i.e.- a repeat of the 1926 Great Miami hurricane).

[gatorcane]

I will have to side with SouthernWx here...the FL peninsula has been way to luck since 1960 until last year. In the 1930s-1950s, FL was hit by a major hurricane every 2 years! People just don't understand that...and it looks like this active pattern is happening once again for FL....I will put money that we will not see such a calm period that we saw between 1960 and 2003...if it doesn't happen this year it will happen within the next few years. FL (and particularly Southern Florida) will be hit by a major hurricane soon. South Florida is the most vulnerable.

[mobilebay]

South Florida by no stretch of the imagination is Safe. Please get prepared NOW!

[SouthernWx]

If I lived anywhere along the U.S. Atlantic or Gulf Coast, I'd be preparing now.

Even if the hurricane cycle zeroes in on the Florida peninsula for the next two decades, that does little to reassure me about other coastal states....because so many major hurricanes have struck Florida, crossed over the peninsula and went on to create havoc as major hurricanes elsewhere along the U.S. coastline.

We were quite fortunate last season that none of the three hurricanes to cross Florida became major canes afterwords.....because as Donna, Betsy, and Andrew all proved, a landfalling major hurricane for Florida can end up as a major landfalling hurricane nearly anywhere between New England and Texas.

PW

[EDR1222]

I agree with southernwx. These things sure seem to run in cycles. I would like to add to Boca Chris about the thirties through the fifties. Beginning in 1926 there was a flurry. A cat 1 hurricane in July of 1926 coming ashore close to Jupiter which was of course followed by the Monster Miami Hurricane two months later and then in 1928 another cat 1, maybe a 2 came ashore just north of Jupiter which was followed by the great storm that came ashore near Palm Beach the same year. So you could really say from 1926 to about 1950, Florida took some abuse fairly regularly! Then as Southernwx pointed out, the carolinas seemed to be the bullseye during the eighties and nineties through 2003.

[Steve]

>>If I lived anywhere along the U.S. Atlantic or Gulf Coast, I'd be preparing now

Cigarettes and beer will be stale by late August, September and October. I'm going to wait at least another 3 months to stock up on essentials .

Steve