Birthday breeze My job means I have to keep a close eye on the hurricane season as I spend most of the day advising chief risk officers and managers on protecting their assets against a host of things that can go wrong including natural catastrophes. To some degree companies can plan for hurricanes, unlike say earthquakes, but still the sight of this year's first named windstorm marauding across the gulf coast has left me cold.

The National Hurricane Center today issued a hurricane warning for the part of the gulf coast of Florida stretching from the very beautiful Longboat Key near Sarasota to the Ochlockonee River south of Tallahassee. 20,000 people have already been evacuated.

If Alberto does come ashore it will be the earliest hurricane in 40 years. The World Meteorological Organization is responsible for naming storms which reach tropical storm intensity and these names go in a 6-year cycle, with the more infamous ones retired and replaced with new ones. Just in case you are wondering this is what the US has to look forward to this summer:

Alberto, Beryl, Chris, Debby, Ernesto, Florence, Gordon, Helene, Isaac, Joyce, Kirk, Leslie, Michael, Nadine, Oscar, Patty, Rafael, Sandy, Tony, Valerie and William.

One of the countries leading research institutes at Colorado State University are predicting 17 named storms this season, with five of the hurricanes sustaining winds of 111 mph or greater, i.e. a category 3, 4 or 5. More on hurricane categories here.

Incidentially Colorado State University is situated in Fort Collins, CO which is only a short hop from where I will be tomorrow and as hurricane's have become a regular feature in my life in Chicago it's kind of apt that What was the score? will celebrate it's 2nd birthday tomorrow just a gust of wind away from one of the world's leading hurricane experts.  ¶ 01:43