Hurricane Season '06

[Corona Gigante]

So here we go again!

From this week's cover story in the Houston Press (aptly entitled Holy Sh--!)

The National Weather Service has issued its official Hurricane Outlook for the year. The good news: NOAA, the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, "is not forecasting a repeat of last year's season," says Conrad Lautenbacher, the agency's administrator.

The bad news: NOAA is predicting "a very active 2006 season," with up to 16 named storms and six major hurricanes.

I hope everybody is adequately insured for both wind and water damage, although I've heard some pretty disturbing stories about the insurance industry in the last couple of weeks. Here's another excerpt from the same article.

Attorney Steve Mostyn represents about 150 victims of Hurricane Rita, most of them in the Beaumont area. He doesn't like insurance companies.

"I would call the insurance industry incompetent, with no desire to solve their incompetency problem," he says. "If you get a good adjuster who knows what he's doing you'll be okay, but if you happened to draw somebody who didn't know what they were doing or had a particular attitude about something, well, once we see that train get off-track, we never see it get back on track."

How bad can it get?

"I got a report over here," Mostyn says. "One insurance company, the engineer wrote for them that the 140-mile-per-hour winds didn't damage the house; the tree that fell over and landed in the yard caused seismic waves to shake the house and damage it..."

Best of luck to all my fellow gorillas living on the gulf coast and Atlantic coasts. See you all in November!

[TU09]

On the insurance company front, a Long Beach couple recently won a court battle against State Farm claiming that their flood exclusions were too ambiguous to be enforced. Something about the policy not paying for wind damage if such damage occurs before, during, or immediatly after excluded damage, in this case flooding. Basicly, State Farm excludes any damage from covered events when non-covered events occur in a sequence that makes it difficult for them to determine what damage was done by what ( such as: Did the house need to be gutted because the roof blew off and rain soaked the house or because the levees were overtopped and the house flooded?). lt will be interesting to see where the case goes.

I have a feeling that those of us in NOLA will be evacuating a few times this season. Good luck to all in coastal regions.

[cigar_040]

Best of luck to all costal/inland jungle dwellers. I hope the predictions are way-off and it's a quiet season........for everybodies sake and sanity.

[AAlmeter]

Don't worry....the Hurricane's season will end tonight.

[White97Jimmy]

When the hurricanes start hitting Detroit, that's when I'll be scared!

[zamco17]

I live in south Texas, i hope we luck out again, we havent had a major hurricane since Celia in 1970.

[bruceolee]

3 hurricanes in the last 2 years and 2 of them considered major. I say bring it on.

[cigar no baka]

I got flood insurance right after Allison in Fall 2001. Will never go without it again. Going to go out this weekend and buy batteries, some food, duct tape and such and will be ready to sit out another one if we get one.


No way I'm going to evacuate, since I'm over 60 miles inland and not in a storm surge area, not even a Cat 5 storm surge.

[Bigwaved]

Well, they are going to the finals, that is for sure.

[Corona Gigante]

Originally Posted by zamco17

I live in south Texas, i hope we luck out again, we havent had a major hurricane since Celia in 1970.

I remember the afternoon before Rita blew in, sitting watching the weather channel with my ex and her mom. After seeing what Katrina had done to NOLA, I was pretty nervous. They were both scoffing, saying how this was nothing, Celia was a real hurricane.

[AAlmeter]

Originally Posted by Bigwaved

Well, they are going to the finals, that is for sure.

[Bigwaved]

Originally Posted by AAlmeter

Sorry, not intended to rub salt in the wound!

[AAlmeter]

Originally Posted by Bigwaved

Sorry, not intended to rub salt in the wound!

Don't worry about it. I've never been much into hockey...but its been Sabres mania here in Buffalo the past few weaks.

Now if you speak poorly of my Bills

[Bigwaved]

Originally Posted by AAlmeter

Don't worry about it. I've never been much into hockey...but its been Sabres mania here in Buffalo the past few weaks.

Now if you speak poorly of my Bills

Ahh, yes, less than 100 days until kick off!!! Life is good.

[Mr. White]

Originally Posted by Corona Gigante

So here we go again!

From this week's cover story in the Houston Press (aptly entitled Holy Sh--!)

The National Weather Service has issued its official Hurricane Outlook for the year. The good news: NOAA, the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, "is not forecasting a repeat of last year's season," says Conrad Lautenbacher, the agency's administrator.

The bad news: NOAA is predicting "a very active 2006 season," with up to 16 named storms and six major hurricanes.

I hope everybody is adequately insured for both wind and water damage, although I've heard some pretty disturbing stories about the insurance industry in the last couple of weeks. Here's another excerpt from the same article.

Attorney Steve Mostyn represents about 150 victims of Hurricane Rita, most of them in the Beaumont area. He doesn't like insurance companies.

"I would call the insurance industry incompetent, with no desire to solve their incompetency problem," he says. "If you get a good adjuster who knows what he's doing you'll be okay, but if you happened to draw somebody who didn't know what they were doing or had a particular attitude about something, well, once we see that train get off-track, we never see it get back on track."

How bad can it get?

"I got a report over here," Mostyn says. "One insurance company, the engineer wrote for them that the 140-mile-per-hour winds didn't damage the house; the tree that fell over and landed in the yard caused seismic waves to shake the house and damage it..."

Best of luck to all my fellow gorillas living on the gulf coast and Atlantic coasts. See you all in November!

Meh, The Insurance situation in Florida is crap. It's basically coming down to the insurance companies getting to decide whether or not they'll bother covering damages here. And they keep talking about wanting to raise everyone's insurance to cover those who live on the coastline. Then they changed the flood maps for Florida and now there's a bunch of people who are going to lose their insurance or have to pay HUGE premium fees because now their area is listed as a flood plain. I got so disgusted with it all I quit following it. (still live in an apartment, so it's not really too much of an issue for us.)

Florida's not the best place to own a house right now. heh.