Last year was no fluke. The mighty Atlantic conveyor belt is in high gear, and sea-surface temperatures are up. That means we could be in for decades of coast-crushing hurricanes.

At midday the barrier island in Vero Beach has the weird feel of a place quickly and angrily abandoned. Poking around debris-lined streets among spray-painted signs all denigrating a certain Jeanne—I'm hoping not to be mistaken for a looter by a cop—or, worse yet, by an armed Floridian homeowner. Wind gusts drive intermittent sheets of rain as a few stragglers throw a last suitcase or heirloom into a car before scurrying over the causeway to the mainland. Jeanne, you see, is a major hurricane, already a killer of thousands