What a strange and wonderful world we live in.
Having survived hurricane Hugo here on St. Croix in 1989, my heart goes out to the Brazilians who were effected by whatever it was that nailed them.

RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AP) - A day after a massive tropical storm battered the southern coast, Brazilians tended to victims and struggled to understand exactly what hit them.

Civil defense officials said Monday the storm - dubbed Catarina by meteorologists - left at least three people dead, 38 injured and more than 2,000 people homeless.

Rescuers plucked two fishermen from the sea and found the body of another off Brazil's southern coast Monday.

Brazilian meteorologists, meanwhile, disputed assertions by U.S. weather experts that the storm was a hurricane.


U.S. officials said the storm, which struck land some 520 miles southwest of Rio de Janeiro packing sustained winds of more than 74 mph, appeared to be the first hurricane on record in the South Atlantic.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami estimated the storm was a full-fledged, Category I hurricane with central winds of 75-80 mph. A private U.S. forecasting company, AccuWeather, said it also considered the storm a hurricane. Some gusts reportedly hit 94 mph.

But Brazilians, who have long prided themselves as having a country free of hurricanes, were not convinced.
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Brazilian authorities claim they don't have hurricanes - so therefore Catarina wasn't a 'hurricane'...Socialism in a nutshell.