Hurricane Fever

Florida has taken a real battering over the past few weeks. No, it had nothing to do with the upcoming election or the infamous one of hanging chads or stolen elections, but with Mother Nature's tropical fury - hurricanes. The latest, Hurricane Ivan, is apparently going to travel up the western coast of the state.

The reign of terror began about 3 weeks ago with Hurricane Charley. It was expected to travel up the western coast of the Sunshine State and level Tampa. What Charley did was smash up much of the southwestern portion of the state, in locales like Port Charlotte and Fort Myers, then avoided Tampa altogether and attempted to level Orlando. There were many people in Orlando who had fled Tampa only to watch it uproot trees and taunt them from their hotel windows. These people included the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Many people were without power for over a week.

Soon after, Florida was rocked by Hurricane Frances. This demure sounding hurricane was to rock the Miami-Dade Broward area but hit farther north in Martin County. Charley weakened in Florida and traveled up to the coast and caused severe flooding in the Carolinas. People who were riding the tempest out in their storm shuttered homes started to go stir crazy after waiting for what could have been their pending doom. They couldn't even take their shutters down as yet another powerful hurricane was waiting in the tropics, Ivan.

Ivan has so far destroyed 90% of the homes in Grenada and is on record as the sixth most powerful hurricane of all time. It is currently over Cuba and is expected to hit the west coast of Florida and travel into the Gulf of Mexico. The people are tired of having to deal with gas stations out of fuel and super markets that are out of things like water, batteries, and other groceries.

Florida is said to have been fortunate for a few decades with weather patterns that would ultimately blow most hurricanes away from the state. Scientists have said that changing weather patterns and currents have now made the "Sunshine State" a hurricane magnet. With these high powered winds and the destruction that they and their tornadoes cause, one can only wonder if this is soon to be paradise lost.