If you move to Florida, you need to realize it appears a new Florida peninsula landfalling cycle has begun (as of 2004), with as many major landfalling hurricanes (3....Charley, Jeanne, Wilma) in the past two seasons as occurred during the previous 53 years COMBINED (1951-2003....Donna, Betsy, Andrew). This has serious ramifications for Floridians during the next two or three decades.

So far, south Florida has honestly been fortunate; Charley was very small and struck the least populated county along the Florida west coast south of Tampa. Jeanne missed highly populated areas of Palm Beach and Broward counties (so did Frances, which also weakened to cat-2 before landfall). Wilma's worst winds/ storm tides struck unihabitated swamps of the Everglades south of Naples...the core also narrowly missed the Keys where reportedly many failed to evacuate (we're lucky a lot of people down there didn't drown). With the last major landfall cycle (1919 to 1950) as a guide, it's almost inevitable that sooner or later, we're going to witness a very large and intense hurricane impact a highly populated coastal area (as the September 1926, September 1928, and September 1947 cat-4 hurricanes all did).

I wouldn't tell anyone not to relocate to central or south Florida (I've thought about doing so a time or two myself); just remember Florida's climatological hurricane frequency (and historical frequency of major hurricanes since 1850) and be prepared.....for hurricane season and mentally prepared for what the next massive hurricane could cause.

PW