William Gray knows his message is time-worn, and he knows that many will not listen. He has heard all the Chicken Little wisecracks many times before. But there he was again Friday, with charts and graphs and his pointer, delivering a hurricane warning he feels Floridians must eventually heed. In the next 35 years, he predicted, hurricanes will cause Florida to suffer 10 times the economic loss it suffered in the preceding 35 years. Andrew in 1992.
Conditions are ripe for very large economic loss.
The long-term climate patterns that inhibited big storms began to change in the mid 1990s, Gray said, but still Florida's good luck held. This won't remain. Some of those storms are going to make their way west. The lessons remain the same, he said. Have a plan.