Environment

Tropical Storm Andrea Is a Wuss

Oh, the (non) horror!
NOAA/NASA

The first named Atlantic cyclone of the season, Tropical Storm Andrea, punched into Florida yesterday and is already causing widespread havoc. Wait a second... no, everything actually seems pretty fine down there.

Andrea is far from a puppy of a storm – it's spawned tornadoes that snapped power poles and blew some dude's porch away – but it in no way resembles, say, 2000's Tropical Storm Gordon, which killed about two-dozen people in Guatemala before lumbering to Florida to damage hundreds of homes and drown a surfer. Nor does it draw comparisons to 2001's Gabrielle, a violent sower of $230 million in destruction, or 2008's Fay, a meteorological monster that made a record-breaking four landfalls in Florida to cause savage flooding and five fatalities.