Reply #3: people in Ontario sure remember Hazel!

[Lisa]

There's a big clearing in the woods near my folks' place, which the locals call "Hazel's Wrath". The storm was weak by the time it hit us (you're right, it wasn't a hurricane anymore) -- but the rainfall it brought, considering that the ground was already saturated from an already-wet summer, flooded many areas. That's what kills the most people -- not the wind, but the water. Even a Category 1 or 2 can be fatal, if it's slow-moving and dumps a lot of rain. Especially if the area isn't used to big storms. (Nova Scotia was also caught by surprise a few years back.)

And the situation is worse now, given that so many areas are urbanized. (The paving tends to make flooding faster and higher, because the water has nowhere else to go.) Ontario tried to put in a provincial watershed management system after Hazel, but hasn't been able to curb urban sprawl.

Excellent points, hedgehog. I could imagine a hurricane working its way up the eastern seaboard -- or the Mississippi Valley, all the way to the border, dropping water as it went. (And of course in the latter case the floods would wash down to New Orleans, causing even more damage.)

I fear that there have been times when there have been two or more hurricanes at once, in the Atlantic basin -- in fact, in 1998, there were FOUR of them! That only happened a couple of times in the 20th century, and there were only about a half-dozen seasons with three simultaneous storms (but we have no guarantee that this will be as rare in the 21st).

A really bad fire outbreak in the West, or California -- or a severe earthquake -- would also tax civil defense resources.