This is the nailbiting time for forecasters, ... We're waiting for Bertha to make her turn to the northeast but there's some uncertainty about when it will happen.

During the time when so few hurricanes hit North America, we as a society framed decisions about land use, construction standards and other aspects of our lives around the shores of the Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico, ... Built into those plans was the unstated assumption that hurricanes would continue to stay away from our shores as they had for the last third of a century.

We don't know what was going on out in the middle of the ocean.

You can't really get by with a serious landfall that hits developed coastline without doing a few billion dollars in damage,

You'd need a lot of mini-subs.

We aren't talking about a whole lot of money.