Meteorologists Predict Light Hurricane Season in 2014

Recently, the weather experts in charge of hurricane prognostications have come out with their annual assessment of the upcoming Atlantic tropical storm season, which officially begins on June 1.  The prediction is (drum roll, please): fewer hurricanes than usual.  Whew, that's a relief, right? Wrong.  Last year they were predicting a heavy season and it died out, not that I'm complaining.  There's nothing to me quite as exhilarating as seeing a named storm, even a hurricane-level one coming westward in our general direction toward the Caribbean area...and then to suddenly be destroyed by wind shear and opposing weather patterns.  This seemed to happened over and over again last year, so in spite of the relatively large number of named storms, they tended to have a very inhospitable environment for continued growth...or even survival.  Only the ones who stayed put out in the Mid-Atlantic high seas seemed to hang in there. Since I am no longer in elementary or high school, the one incentive for me to want to get hit (or at least seriously threatened) by a hurricane, which was to get a day or two off from classes, has disappeared and I no longer have any desire whatsoever to see any of them come within a thousand miles.  Especially after the traumatic 2004 and 2005 seasons. 

Even in "slow" years for tropical storms, there need only be one that hits at the worst place and the worst time.  In June 1972, early hurricane Agnes, which by itself wasn't all that terribly nasty, slammed into the Florida panhandle from the Gulf of Mexico and merged with a severe frontal system that eventually caused catastrophic flooding in the interior of the eastern part of the country.  It was one of only four named tropical storms for that year.  Likewise, in another four-storm season, 1983, Hurricane Alicia slammed into the Houston/Galveston area and caused massive damage.  I'm sure the folks there couldn't have cared less whether it was a "light" or "heavy" tropical storm system for that year!

Gainesville, where I have lived pretty much the last 37 years, has within my memory never been directly hit by a hurricane, although it has experienced tropical storm weather.  The worst storms here were Dora in 1964 (while I was still living elsewhere, near Miami in West Hollywood) and the double combination of Frances and Jeanne in 2004.  The eye of Dora passed through (westward from the Jacksonville area) about 40-50 miles north of Gainesville while the worst of the 2004 storms passed to our west (although Jeanne approached closer with more severe winds).  After 2004, everyone in the media, it seemed, thought themselves a weather expert and that this type of hurricane-intensive season would become the norm (global warming getting the lion's share of the blame).  Well, it hasn't...at least not yet.  Hopefully, we'll dodge the bullet again this year, light season or not...