Posted 9/09/2007 05:42:00 PM by Douglas

You live on the coast, you take your chances with hurricanes. You also pay out the nose for home insurance, but that's another rant. Just like earthquakes in Cali, tornadoes in Kansas or lava on the side of Kilauea, you pay your money, you take your chances, but in case the TV weather guy isn't working overtime trying to scare the crap out of old people, let the paper do it.

From a scientific standpoint, we can't say for sure that Texas is due for a surge in hurricane activity. Mother Nature, after all, doesn't always obey mathematical probabilities.

But let's face it, Texas is due.

Really? Is that the same mathematical certainty you use to buy your lotto tickets? It's equally retarded. I don't know what the line in Vegas of the Texas coast getting hit by a big storm, but sometimes it happens, sometimes it doesn't. Look at Allison. She did $6 Billion in damage without even making hurricane strength.

Since 1851, more than five dozen hurricanes have made landfall on the Texas coast. But in the 1990s and 2000s — a time when the Atlantic basin has seen, perhaps, the most intense tropical activity of any recorded era — just two hurricanes have made a direct hit on the state.

That's about one-fourth the number history suggests Texas should see.

Activity in the current period is certainly a far cry from that of the 1940s, when 10 hurricanes struck Texas.

So? Compare 2005 to 2006. Anyone saw either one of those years coming? Of course not.

Look, everyone on the coast knows it's a risk. It's a risk we accept. What we don't need is the freakin' media trying to scare us. That's not doing a favor to anyone.