And So It Begins...Again

Florida had a visitor this past weekend. A fellow named "Barry" who blew in off the Gulf of Mexico just north of St. Petersburg. Thus marked the advent of the 2007 - six months in duration - hurricane season. We citizens of Florida heralded his arrival with mixed emotions.

On the positive side Barry never managed to work himself up to hurricane status, arriving over the coast with wind gusts in the twenty to thirty mile per hour range; far below the seventy-one mile per hour threshold that designates a tropical storm's graduation to bigger and badder things. He also was more of a most welcomed "rain-maker." Florida, like much of the deep south, has been in the throes of a drought, exacerbated by wild fires that, if one believed the daily news reports, were burning uncontrolled just outside every one's back door. For a period of three days, a couple of week's ago, the wind-swept smoke from one of the largest of these fires burning thousands of acres along the Florida & Georgia border was so thick in the Tampa Bay area that the sun was obscured behind a thick haze. Barry, bless his little heart, managed to deposit enough precipitation to quell the majority of these fires.

As insignificant as was Barry's potential threat for even minor property damage, having a tropical storm rear it's head on "day one" of the new hurricane season makes for many unsettled feelings of what may yet lie ahead. 2006 was a season of most welcomed reprieve from what Florida and the Gulf Coast states suffered in 2005 as one after another devastating hurricanes ravaged cities and communities into virtual oblivion. As as result insurance carriers that had previously underwritten home-owner's insurance canceled existing policies by the thousands and, for those who were not unceremoniously dropped, received notifications that their yearly premiums had gone from manageable to rivaling a significant portion of the national debt. The "natives are restless" here in the Sunshine State.

So Barry...we were appreciative of all the most needed rain that you left in your wake, but we would humbly request that as you disappear over the far horizon that you advise all of your brothers and sisters that may be making plans to visit us later this summer, we'd just as soon that they didn't. We find that living in paradise is much more enjoyable without lawn furniture whizzing by our heads.