It's Hurricane Season - Be Prepared!

Today, June 1st, marks the first day of Hurricane Season. This will run for 6 months, through to November 30th. Here are a few facts about hurricanes, as well as a few helpful websites, that I'd like to share with you. Did you know that for hundreds of years, hurricanes in the West Indies were named after the particular saint's day on which the storm made landfall? Using a woman's name became customary after a novel called "Storm", was written in 1941 by author George R. Stewart. In 1951 the United States adopted the plan to name storms after the phonetic alphabet...Able, Baker, Charlie...But, then in 1953 the weather service returned to only using female names. This officially ended in 1978, some believe due in part to the feminist movement, when names from both genders were used to designate storms in the Pacific. One year later, male and female names were included for the Atlantic Ocean storms, too, and it has remained that way ever since. Once a system with counter clockwise motion is identified, and the sustained wind speeds at at 39 mph, the storm is named. A list of this year's names can be found on the National Hurricane Center's website. This site also has a great resource of information pertaining to hurrican preparedness. I am also including a link to Collier County's Emergency Management website, which offers important suggestions such as having a family plan among other things. Last, but certainly not least, is the great "library" website that the state of Florida just put together offering consumers invaluable information about insurance. This blog post was not meant to alarm you. Hurricanes are a fact of nature. Consider the fact that we are notified days in advance of an upcoming storm. All in all, we are quite fortunate to live in paradise...just wanted you to be prepared!