Hurricane Ian Was a 'Worst-Case Scenario' for Florida (www.sarasotamagazine.com)

“If we’re going to protect our Florida way of life, we’re going to have to build our infrastructure to survive our Florida way of life,” says meteorologist Bob Bunting.

Hurricane Ian was my worst-case scenario,” says Bob Bunting.

Bunting, the founder of Sarasota’s Climate Adaptation Center (CAC), is an entrepreneur and meteorologist who previously was a lead forecaster for the National Weather Service and a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research. In short: He’s been around a storm or two. At the CAC, he and his team aim to help both businesses and individuals apply climate science to Florida’s unique challenges.

This year, Bunting and the CAC forecast 22 named storms, with five of them becoming major hurricanes. At the the center’s annual conference last year, Bunting showed the audience an image of a storm that would hit Cuba then move into the Gulf and rapidly intensify before hitting Southwest Florida. The devastation, he said, would be catastrophic.

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