Hurricane Time
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"Summer is here, the season of long swims in the ocean, of quiet fishing and fair-weather sailing. It's the season of plentiful work and good times-except for one thing. Lurking in the back of our minds is a nagging question: Will this be the year of the Big One?"

Weather Notebook commentator Jan Deblieu.

"Hurricane season officially opens June 1st, but we don't see much activity until August. Still, every so often someone says in a rather exhausted tone, 'I hope we don't have any big storms this year'.

It wasn't always this way. When I moved here in 1985, people's faces tended to light up at the first mention of a hurricane. After all, we reasoned, we're a tough breed; we live on one of the most storm-lashed stretches of coast in the world. Coming face-to-face with nature's violent side helps us stay awake and feel alive. But that was a long time ago, before Gloria and Andrew, Hugo and Emily, Bertha and Fran, Dennis and Floyd. That was before a change in atmospheric patterns started sending hurricanes roaring up the Atlantic coast like balls up a bowling alley.

How many storms this year? How close to us will they hit? We stock up on canned goods and check our supplies of batteries and lamp oil. We make sure we know where our most important papers are, just in case. And we say to ourselves-never out loud or to others-what the heck are we doing, living in such a dangerous place?"

The Weather Notebook is a production of the Mount Washington Observatory. I'm Dave Thurlow.