For some, December 1st is the start of Christmas Season (or Channukah, or Kwanza, or whatever... whatever you want to celebrate, have a good celebration) For others, December 1st is when they start holiday shopping (preferring to avoid the crowds of Black Friday) For me, December 1st means the end of hurricane season.

This year especially, I'm glad to see the end of hurricane season. Every year that I've been down here, we've been affected to one extent or another. In 1998, Hurricane Mitch ripped out the dock and the tank-filling room from the Lobster Pot. 2000 brought Helene which managed to blow itself out and passed between the Cayman Islands as a tropical wave. In 2001, Chantal passed by Cayman right when I got back from Texas (where I had to deal with the rain/flooding from TS Allison) and then Iris was looking like it was coming right for us, but didn't have too much effect on us. Just when we thought we were all in the clear, Hurricane Michelle passed by to the west of us and the southwest corner of the island took a beating from waves. All that hard work we did rebuilding the dock & tank room after Mitch was removed and we had to do it all over again. Hurricane's Isidore and Lili came a-knocking in 2002 but left without doing any significant damage and last year, 2003, was fairly light with just Claudette to come into our area.

This year, however was another story. We started off with Charley, the storm that wasn't. Somehow it managed to pass by us by about 30 miles. 30 miles away from the eye of Charley, and we had nothin. Jenny went in to work an hour late and I went to work in the afternoon. Charley later gave Florida a serious ass-beating. Earl was headed for us but fizzled out into an open wave as it got into the Caribbean. Then came Ivan (pictures). Ivan was so big that the National Hurricane Center hasnt finalized and posted it's post-storm analysis and report yet.

This spring, we had a tropical storm in April, out of season. It didn't go anywhere, but it was classified as a tropical storm because of it's characteristics. Yesterday the NHC started issuing advisories on Tropical Storm Otto, but it was way out in the ocean and heading in the wrong direction (ie not west!). Otto is out-of-season as well.