According to my interpretation of comments by my weather guru, Dr. Jeff Masters, co-founder of The Weather Underground (where I get all my spaghetti maps during hurricane season), we can start to breathe a little easier. The waters won't start cooling off as fast as they would in an El Nino year, but they are getting cooler, which usually means we see decreasing activity.

According to info on http://www.wunderground.com, Jeff wrote much of the software that ingests and formats the raw NWS data. He knows a lot about hurricanes, but all I know is...when I go to his site, I can find whatever I need for anything out there that has a name or number...and I can follow it till it gets to my front door if it comes to that. And while I realize there is nothing I can personally do to make it go away, it does make me feel like I have some control in the situation...which of course we all do...we can control how prepared we are for a storm. I'm just happy I did not have to prepare for anything this year. I hope we finish out this year without any major weather disasters of any kind on the Gulf Coast or anywhere else.

So it's October 2007 and I can only say, "That's two down."

We were lucky this year despite all of the predictions for a record breaking year.

I always have to remember that people in the paths of these things at least have some notice to pack a few things and get out. Unlike a tornado or an earthquake, at least you know where your kids are when it hits.

Sometimes, like with Katrina, you can't prepare for all the surprises. Even a small one like Rita has it's aggravations--when it passed thru Houston right after Katrina missed us, a huge tree fell over on someone's house...a tree from their neighbor's yard. I'm sure that frustration lingered long after the damage was fixed. So even the smaller ones can be more involved than just missing work and cleaning up the debris in the yard when it's over.

Anyway, all I have to worry about for the next six months is whether or not my apartment will turn the heat on BEFORE the temperature drops into the 30's. Now our friends up north have to start worrying about the snow storms and having supplies in their car if they get trapped in one. Mother Nature is always trying to catch us off guard. And she's pretty dang good at it, too.