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So, here we are: Labor Day and life is beginning to return to normal after the long, hot summer break.

“Normal” is such an ill-defined place.

As Floridians, we can never forget that “normal” can be radically and sometimes forever changed by one bad day when a hurricane might blow through.

We are, after all, just now reaching the statistical peak of hurricane season. Sure, they only come along once in a while but when they do they can alter life as we know it. Normal becomes desperation.

One has to admit we’ve been pretty darn lucky around here when it comes to hurricanes. Sure, Wilma messed up a lot of folks around here and a fair chunk of property back about three years ago but we didn’t see nearly the destruction Wilma caused along the Yucatan Peninsula. And we’ve nearly forgotten that Wilma was at the time, just before it slammed Mexico, the most intense storm ever recorded.

New Orleans still hasn’t recovered from Katrina in the same year.

Hurricane Charley, the year before, was the scariest storm I can recall in quite some time. Forecast to be only a tropical storm as it brushed past us on a supposed course toward Tampa Bay, we all watched in horror as it cooked into a 150-mph. storm within four hours and right before our eyes and tore a swath of destruction from Punta Gorda to Orlando.

Hurricane Andrew in 1992 was horrible in Dade County but with the exception of Everglades City and Marco Island, only brushed the majority of Collier County.

One has to go all the way back to 1960 to find a hurricane that altered the course of life along this particular stretch of coast. That storm was Donna and it was a nightmare.

One can hear folks who were here when Hurricane Donna raced up this coast in 1960 say storms don’t get much worse than that. The fact of the matter is, though, hurricanes can get much worse than Donna. Just ask the folks in Punta Gorda or South Miami.

Donna’s winds were estimated at 130 mph. The infamous Labor Day storm of 1935, which just missed our region and killed hundreds of people along Lake Okeechobee pummeled the Keys with winds estimated at 200 mph. There were reports of Andrew’s winds gusting to 200 mph in South Dade. The force of those winds was three times the force of winds felt here in 1960.

Lots of folks misunderstand what is meant by wind “force.”

“What’s a little wind?” they might ask. “Summer thunderstorms can produce gusts of 50 mph. Wind at 100 or 150 can’t be much worse.”

Wrong.

Wind “force” increases exponentially as the wind “speed” increases. Each time the wind speed is doubled, the wind force increases four times. If the wind speed is tripled, the force increases nine times.

A 100 mph. wind has four times the force of a 50 mph. wind and a 150 mph. wind is nine times as strong as a 50 mph. wind. A 200 mph. wind will have 100 times the force of a 20 mph. breeze. You can blow out a candle with a 20 mph. puff or breath. You can blow out a wall and roof with 200 mph.

Even minimal hurricanes, 74 mph., have been known to drive a piece of two-by-four lumber through a concrete wall four inches thick.

One often hears hurricane forecasters talking in terms of a “50-year storm event” or a “100-year storm event.” Andrew and Charley, they say, were 500-year storm events. I guess that means we won’t have to worry about another hurricane as strong as those until the year 2504.

Wrong.

Charley came along only 12 years after Andrew. Another Andrew or Wilma or Charley could come along any time this fall.

There is an old legend that suggests the Calusa people, destroyed along this coast by the Spanish, placed a blessing on their beloved region protecting it from hurricanes.

And the fact of the matter is there’s a geographical grain of truth in the legend. We’re situated, generally speaking, on Florida’s “leeward coast.” The thinking once was that huge Atlantic storms hitting the East Coast weaken as they move across the Everglades and storms forming Yucatan Straits or the western Caribbean just don’t have enough time to build into major storms before hitting here.

Andrew destroyed the first theory. Charley destroyed the second theory.

History shows 62 tropical systems passed within 60 miles of Southwest Florida between 1886 and 2007. A few miles either way and we could have a very bad day, indeed.

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Steve Hart comes from solid cracker stock but revels in the changing face of 21st century Florida and its patchwork quilt of people, their cultures, traditions, shades and ideas. His book, “Tales from Down Yonder, Florida,” is available in local bookstores and on the Web at www.downyonderflorida.com.