Andrew was my first. For me, it was over pretty quickly.

It was 1992, and I was a reporter in suburban New Orleans, working north of the city, across Lake Pontchartrain in Mandeville. An hour away, near LaPlace, Hurricane Andrew killed people and destroyed homes. Florida endured most of Andrew’s wrath. The storm was catastrophic on every level. The marine industry took a huge hit – BoatUS pegged losses of boats and marinas at roughly $500 million.

Mother Nature and I have an uneasy relationship.

I was an assistant city editor at The Times–Picayune in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. With many other colleagues, I stayed at the office and rode out the storm, publishing the "paper" as we could online after we lost power and set up in a special newsroom bunker designed for storm coverage. Then the levees broke, and a fleet of circulation trucks evacuated 200 of us about noon on a Tuesday–more than 48 hours after the storm–through chest–high water.

Welcome to The Weather Blog!

I will be covering the 2008 Marina and Yacht Club Hurricane Symposium in Orlando this week. Sponsored by BoatUS, the conference is aimed at marina owners. But boaters can learn much from their successes and failures when prepping for these monster storms. Stay tuned!