ON AUGUST 25TH, AS HURRICANE HARVEY SLAMMED into the Texas coast, Don Resio, a 70-year-old University of North Florida meteorologist and a leading expert in hurricane modeling, sat on his living-room couch with his wife, Kathryn, and their cat Marley, switching between the Weather Channel, MSNBC and CNN. “I knew it was going to be devastating,” says Resio, but even he was surprised by the astounding 52 inches of rain recorded near Houston. Eleven days later, Hurricane Irma notched nearly unprecedented 185-miles-per-hour winds and then careened into Florida, ripping apart homes in the Keys and flood-
ing downtown sections of Miami and Jacksonville, which is not far from Resio’s home in the seaside community of Ponte Vedra. “It’s not a good time,” Resio says, “to be living near the coast.”…
