Carol C
TUG Lifetime Member
I just wonder if Indian legend looked to the past and didnt anticipate a future where climate change presents unique challenges. Even deniers might see the video and photos showing glacier melt and acknowledge sea level rise and sea temperature rise. I hope the Indians are prophetic and always right...but to me Florida is a roll of the dice and as much a magnet for hurricanes as the Carolinas coast. Thanks for posting your surprising reply.Our neighbors who work for the Dept. of Agriculture and get sent all over Florida were just telling us last night about Sarasota being such a great place to live weather wise. When I tried to find out more about what they were saying this is what I found.
"There is a legend that locals here know (and some believe) that when the state was inhabited by Indian tribes they would travel here during hurricane season (it obviously wasn't called that back then but they knew what time of year the storms would come in) because they saw it as being a safe haven. They have Indian burial grounds here and that is a legend that is told to explain why we haven't been directly hit by a hurricane in a long time. Now, science explains that our bay is so small that we don't “pull” the storms toward us in the same ways that Tampa, Naples, Miami, and places on the other coast do. Take your pick and do your own research but, I have lived here since 1988 and consider myself a local (I was born in ‘87, so I grew up here) and that is my understanding" This was posted by Kimberly Woodruff.
"Before we moved to Sarasota in 1987, I got a map showing all hurricane tracks back to 1900, and it showed only 3 even close. The traditional track from Africa means that the storm would have to do a 180 degree turn to come in over the gulf. We came close in 2004 when Charlie was headed for us. It turned up the Peace River (they like to follow waterways) and hit Punta Gorda and Charlotte Harbor in a major blow." John MacKay of Sarasota posted that.