Florida's year of the hurricanes

Hurricane Frances is the storm that took forever to get here. And then once it was here, it took forever to leave. The massive, lumbering hurricane - covering an area the size of Texas - made landfall here early Sunday morning after stalling over the Bahamas and then once again offshore.

Now beleaguered Florida residents are emerging after enduring nearly three days of violently wet and windy weather as tropical storm Frances heads north into Alabama and Tennessee packing torrential rains.

But even as the remnants of hurricane Frances still sweep across Florida's skies, weary survivors are keeping a close watch on yet another major hurricane - Ivan, which strengthened from a tropical storm into a Category 4 hurricane in a single day.

The back-to-back wallops of Charley and Frances - coupled with the potential for more hurricanes this year - are cementing this as one of the most damaging storm seasons in Florida history.

Frances, to be sure, could have been far worse. Only two deaths were attributed to the hurricane in its immediate aftermath. But the breadth of storm - covering almost the entire length of the state, which meteorologists say is virtually unprecedented - affected almost every resident in some way. Like Charley, it hit interior sections of the state as well as coastal areas, magnifying the challenge of the cleanup and rebuilding to follow.

Moreover, the storm struck on the busy Labor Day weekend, adding to losses in the $53 billion tourist industry. It also damaged more of the state's citrus crop, already hit hard by Charley.

"Americans want to get back to normal as soon as possible," says Jeff Krauskopf, mayor of Stuart, Fla. He says in the aftermath of Frances, relief and recovery workers have an additional incentive to achieve fast results. "We are trying to pick up before Ivan shows up," he says.

Hurricane Frances downed branches and trees, harassed mobile-home parks, swamped boats, flooded low-lying areas, and stripped young fruit from the state's citrus groves. It also closed airports and coastal hotels statewide and even sent Mickey Mouse into a hurricane shelter for the second time in three weeks, though Disney World officials report no major damage to the Orlando tourist attraction.

The huge storm left no corner of the state unaffected. Powerful bands of wind and rain circulated around a 40-mile-wide "eye," forcing 2.5 million residents of Florida's east coast to flee inland - the largest evacuation in state history. It also forced tens of millions of other residents to board up their homes and wait - for what seemed an eternity - for the storm to arrive and depart.

Combined with hurricane Charley, which struck Aug. 13 with winds of 140 miles per hour, the two storms together left an "X" of destruction across central Florida. Yet hurricane Frances was many times larger than Charley, and only days ago was classified as an extremely dangerous Category 4 hurricane. But high-level winds buffeted the storm while it moved slowly over the Bahamas, causing it to become less organized and weaker. Instead of 140-mile-per-hour winds, by the time Frances made landfall its sustained winds were 90 to 100 miles per hour.

The combination of lower wind speed and extensive pre-storm preparation by home and business owners is being credited with substantially reducing the level of destruction.

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