Season over

For those that have read these pages regularly they will know that my family and I have regularly been impacted by hurricanes, the last one was in October last year when Milton made landfall just up the street from us, and we had to evacuate.

We chose to live in Bermuda and we chose to live 400 metres from the water here on the gulf coast of Florida, so no pity required, but I also spend a lot of time studying their impacts for work.

Yesterday was the last day of this year’s hurricane season, and other than a post about Jamaica and the efforts of Addicks’ Jamaican quartet, this Blog has been void of hurricane stories this summer, and after four years of hurricane landfall’s on this coast and I can’t even remember Bermuda having a summer without at least one, then it has been a welcome relief.

Forecasters and modelers predicted an above-average season, it ended up being closer to an average season, and none of the five hurricanes that formed made landfall in the continental United States for the first time in a decade.

The Atlantic basin produced 13 named storms, of which five became hurricanes, including four major hurricanes, and the most significant was Hurricane Melissa, which made landfall as a Category 5 hurricane in Jamaica. 45 people died and 15 are still missing.

The majority of named storms shot off up the east coast of Florida a long way from the metropolis of Miami, where tens of billions of new real estate has been constructed since Hurricane Andrew devasted a now unrecognizable Miami in 1992. Building codes have improved immeasurably fortunately.

Tropical Storm Chantal, came ashore near Litchfield Beach, South Carolina, in July, bringing some heavy rainfall and flooding but almost every storm managed to navigate its way over the ocean.

Bermuda did get hit or had close enough calls to have 100 mph winds, lose power, close schools and offices. Three hurricanes visited this tiniest of islands this summer, two in one week. It is still a mystery how this pinhead of an island acts like a magnet to these unpredictable Atlantic storms. Who mentioned the triangle….

Anyway around our way we escaped this year, and we were very happy to. Instead we have about a million acorns, maple leaves and palm fronds around the house, that in past years would have been blown away. A small price, however.

We have been used to living through hurricanes, but you never get used to, or blasé of them. They can be anticipated, and unlike an earthquake, you do see them coming, but hurricanes can be an unpredictable and devastating force of nature.