Hurricanes, specifically the hurricanes of 2004. We had four major hurricanes hit my home state that year -- the paths of three of them intersected just a few miles from my house. This is also not counting all of the tropical storms and just general thunderstorms we have on a yearly basis, a set of which a couple of weeks ago cause major damage in my area, thanks in no small part to the tornadoes it spawned. There was even a downed tree in my parents front yard, and I had to go home for the weekend to help take a chainsaw to it.
Getting back on the hurricanes of 2004, we missed what must have been at least a month of school because so many people -- including my family -- were without power, and the damage was impressive. While there wasn't as much damage from the 2004 hurricanes in Florida as Louisiana got from Katrina, it's largely because we don't have many cities kept above water by levies. The closest thing to that worst case scenario would be the dikes around Lake Okechobee bursting, and the everglades violently reclaiming their original extent, which thankfully did not happen. What did happen was bad enough, though; there were downed trees and powerlines everywhere, and during the storms, it was possible to listen and watch as the transformers at the top of the power poles exploded. For over a year after the storms passed, there were houses all over the place which had blue tarps as a temporary roof, because the old one had holes in it. Many, many people lost their homes and spent a fair amount of time in trailers provided by FEMA -- there's a graveyard of what I'm pretty sure are FEMA trailers by the side of a major highway today.
Who was the numbskull that named Florida the Sunshine State again?
