Time to be a Hurricane Prepper!! Will the 2013 Hurricane Season be Busy and Unlucky?

Busy meaning "very active" and unlucky meaning "they might make landfall at a town near you" . . .

That's the definition here and the predictions are beginning to come in faster than a storm surge as the Atlantic Hurricane Season gets closer .... a mere two months away.



Craig Fugate, administrator of FEMA, gave his annual "be prepared speech" and photo shoot while in New Orleans this pass week celebrating not Passover or the Pascal Lamb or the upcoming Easter holiday...no they were discussin' the hurricane season and each lobbying for their favorite cause while enjoying all that New Orleans has to offer...and it has a lot to offer.

Notice they don't give these conferences in places like Fargo, North Dakota... or Abilene, Texas. Nope...they do it up right.

Craig is head of FEMA.... and what he was warning people of was not storm surge but... ready for this??? Higher insurance rates.

http://www.sunherald.com/2013/03/26/4553164/national-hurricane-conference.html

Seems that FEMA needs to at least stay above water, financially speaking, so they will raise insurance rates to stay afloat. I may have gotten that a bit wrong because it doesn't really make sense other than to say there will be "no more free handouts" and I can't believe that's exactly what he means. Then again from experience.... rates do go up and they go up often especially after the insurance companies FINALLY pay out.



Would you like an example? Hurricane Andrew in 1992 came after 27 years of Miami NOT getting hit by a hurricane. Let me put this into better perspective.... it came after the average Miamian who owned a home and paid insurance for 27 years without making one claim. TWENTY SEVEN YEARS...   Let's put 27 years into perspective.  It's the average time a parent goes from giving birth to watching their child give birth and becoming a grandparent. It's longer than most people teach in the school system and have already made it to retirement. It's the length of time most people own a home before they decide to downsize and sell the home after they have paid off the loan. And, after the FIRST time Miamians made claims on said insurance their rates were hiked and many lost their homes or sold their homes fast unable to continue paying high insurance rates on a fixed budget.

http://miami.cbslocal.com/2012/08/24/hurricane-andrews-costly-insurance-legacy/

Again.... John Sr and Mary Elizabeth give birth to a little boy named John Jr. in January 1965 6 months or so after Hurricane Cleo made landfall. The Beatles were still singing I want to hold your hand...and the country was still more on less mourning the death of their young, handsome President Kennedy. Vietnam was a military action on the other side of the planet.



 Carolina Snowball was still jumping through hoops at the Miami Seaquarium drawing massive crowds who came to see the albino dolphin named "Carolina Snowball" and people who caught porpoises on purpose were considered heroes not enemies.



I had one of those as a small child. We stood waiting quietly, in awe as the machine that looked like a little like a machine from OZ and Lost in Space... as it made our little white, waxy still warm souvenirs of our beloved dolphin which was really stolen from a lagoon in South Carolina by porpoise hunters who heard about the legendary white dolphin.



http://www.moldville.com/20--carolina-snowball.html (GREAT ARTICLE....read it, enjoy)

It was TWENTY FIVE CENTS....think on it................

It was the early 60s...and Miami was the place to be. The Beatles came, Cassius Clay came to beat Sonny Liston and Hurricanes Cleo and Betsy came as well.

And, then.... Miami settled down to suburban bliss and raised a generation of kids who would watch the New York Jets beat the Baltimore Colts just the way Joe Namath said they would. They went on to watch the Miami Dolphins beat the New York Jets when Dan Marino was still trying to figure out which college to apply to and they went on to watch Dan Marino play for the Miami Dolphins. The Perfect Season came and went.... and there was a lot of water under the proverbial real estate bridge and the citizens of Miami paid through the nose for insurance fearing a repeat of Hurricane Cleo or Hurricane Betsy but that didn't happen for a long, long time.

The TV series Flipper came and went... followed by Gentle Ben which also came and went.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azEOeTX1LqM



The 1980s came and went... Castro did not die but the Mariel Boat Lift brought Cubans to freedom in Miami and the Cocaine Cowboys ruled the city and still we had not had any hurricanes make landfall. The only Hurricanes that were making landfall were the Miami Hurricanes.



Somewhere down the road UM became "The U" and a legacy of memories was born and played out in televisions across the land where a "Cane" ONLY meant a sports team as the meteorological canes had deserted Miami.

Miami became "cool" again as Miami Vice was king on television and took over the fashion world.





Kids grew up and went away to college to places up north like Gainesville and became Florida Gators and a few went off to the golden colleges of the South like Tulane and Duke and Chapel Hill... and still Miami had not seen a real hurricane of the meteorological kind.

LBJ was President of the USA when Hurricane Betsy pummeled Miami.

Followed by:

NIXON
FORD
CARTER
REAGAN
GEORGE W BUSH

Another handsome young democrat named Bill Clinton was campaigning for the Presidency and his signs littered our lawns before the next Hurricane hit Miami.

Native Miami kids moved away to get away from the high crime and the Cubans who made Spanish our second language. The Cubans moved away to get away from the Colombians who took over the streets.

http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/1990-05-19/news/9001090256_1_miami-police-drug-cartel-three-men


Public Enemy #1 in Miami was no longer the weather disaster known as the hurricanes, but the Cocaine Cowboys who had chased so many of the tourists away.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gq4ta8L9jNc



The media blasted Miami with articles on ridding itself of crime and it's negative image.

http://www.nytimes.com/1987/07/19/magazine/can-miami-save-itself-a-city-beset-by-drugs-and-violence.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

Sigh................. it was the best of times, it was the worst of times and still Miami had not seen another hurricane. And, still.............Miamians paid insurance waiting for that day when meteorological hurricanes would blow the cocaine cowboys away...

Miami tried to woo the tourists back and ironically so did the hurricanes come back and I don't mean the ones at the U.



And....finally...............at long last............................the Insurance Companies had to pay out money to the people who had been investing since before John Jr was born and who were now grand parents to Johnny their grandson.... who now lived in Atlanta where his parents moved to get away from the crime and the Cubans and the Colombians before the Haitians took over the City of Miami....

TWENTY SEVEN YEARS....

TV shows came and went like Presidents and third world immigrants became rich and moved out to Sweetwater and built big mansions and as soon as Miamians made claims on their insurance companies they were dropped faster than a hot potato or more realistically faster than a drug dealer dropped dead under an overpass in Opa Locka.

Trust me... if there is one prediction that will come true this possibly busy hurricane season it will be insurance rates will rise. They will rise as sure as the Crimson Tides will lose again to the Florida Gators.

Trust me on this...

So...stay tuned as the hurricane specialists have all gone home from Nola and they are kicking around the things they learned with their fellow forecasters ...which by the way are mostly fellows... and waves will form far off in the Atlantic and move west north west towards South Florida. And, whether or not the storms make landfall or they do not... insurance rates will rise like the cost of batteries and first aid supplies.

So, when you see them go on sale ....stock up. When you see can goods go on sale...stock up.

Not because you are a Prepper waiting for the world to end and civilization as we know it to fall apart but... because you are a Hurricane Prepper.


That's right... you heard it here first... be the first to be a Hurricane Prepper!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jvCTaccEkMI

Besos Bobbi ;)