The forecast for Hurricane Jeanne shows no mercy on the Sunshine Sate. If things go according to plan, by Saturday night Jeanne should be bearing down on the Florida coast with a path similar to Frances.
I can’t imagine Jeanne will move as slowly, but it’s quite possible her winds will be stronger than Frances. Much of the East Coast has already been weakened without repair.
Can a state throw its collective hands up in resignation?
This hasn’t been a particularly good year to live in Florida. I can’t ever remember this many storms hitting one state. And now, the possibility of a Category 3 storm right where Frances hit a few weeks ago.
I spoke to my folks tonight. My mom and dad still have enough batteries and bottled water to start a store. The unknown adventure that faced them with Frances is now gone. They’ve seen this enemy before and aren’t please by the implications.
They are now paying a special assessment from their condo association to cover the cleanup from Frances. The four days and three nights they spent without power is still fresh on their minds. My dad doesn’t want to go another week without Internet service (as he did).
Forget for a second how this will affect people who currently live in Florida. Over the longer term how will this affect who moves to Florida? A lot of people who would have jumped to Florida a month or two ago, won’t!
Will this be a blow to the Florida economy? I can’t see how it won’t. Yes, there will be outside money coming in to rebuild (insurance, federal aid, etc.). At the same time there will be unreimbursed personal financial losses, the immediate loss of tourism dollars and the longer term repercussions of people staying away.
It doesn’t have to be a large percentage to create a large problem.
We know this hurricane season is unusual, but we don’t know if that fact is meaningful in any way. Is this an anecdotal aberration? Is this the beginning of a trend where strong hurricanes forget to turn into the ocean and hit the coast?
Is this an incredible run of bad luck or have we just been uncommonly lucky in the past?