U.S. forecasters predicted Thursday that this year’s Atlantic hurricane season would produce a normal number of about nine to 15 tropical storms, with as many as four to eight of those becoming hurricanes.

There’s been a minor change made to the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale. The adjustment slightly broadens the wind speed range for Category 4 storms, which then slightly shifts the Category 3 range down and the Category 5 range up. Storms rated Category 3 and higher are considered major hurricanes.

The important things to remember about the scale remain the same:

• the categories rate storms’ winds on a scale from “very dangerous” to “catastrophic,” so pay attention to the storm warnings
• the wind scale doesn’t offer any information on storm surge or other tropical storm impacts, so pay attention to the storm warnings.
• be prepared.

Pensacola Beach, Florida on Flickr.

After crude oil from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster stained Gulf Coast beaches, state and federal officials are eager to head off even the perception of oil spreading toward the coral reefs, beaches and fishing that generate tens of billions of tourist dollars for Florida alone.

The U.S. government’s new International Offshore Response Plan draws on lessons from the Gulf of Mexico spill and was created to stop offshore oil spills as close to their source as possible, even in foreign waters. The plan dated Jan. 30 has not been released publicly. The Associated Press obtained a copy through a Freedom of Information Act request.

The plan comes as Spanish oil company Repsol YPF conducts exploratory drilling in Cuban waters and the Bahamas considers similar development for next year. Complicating any oil spill response in the Florida Straits, though, is the half-century of tension between the U.S. and its communist neighbor 90 miles south of Florida.

LargeUp.com breaks down the Wyclef-Whitney connection. RIP.

With a musical history that dates back to the late 18th century, the group has revitalized a long-lost culture through music performed largely a cappella and entirely in Haitian Creole. Watch The Creole Choir of Cuba mash up Cuban and Haitian cultures in this spirited set at the NPR Music offices.

(Source: NPR)

You heard the Rolling Stones covers and the Moby samples. Alan Lomax heard it first.

The New York Times takes a look at how complicated the US Census can be for Caribbean-Americans. For example, the Garifunas, who are part African, part Caribbean and part Central American, don’t fit into any box.

(Source: The New York Times)

As Haitians in South Florida mark the second anniversary of the catastrophic earthquake that crippled their Caribbean homeland, many are questioning the ongoing aid efforts in their homeland and the support for earthquake survivors still in the U.S. An @AP video by my colleague Tony Winton.

Miami, Florida on Flickr.

An exhibit of contemporary Haitian art created since the 2010 earthquake, “Global Caribbean III: Haiti Kingdom of this World” shows the Caribbean country as a creative hub, not a catastrophe. If you’re in Miami and looking for an alternative to the mournful coverage about the lack of progress in Haiti over the last two years, check out this show at the Little Haiti Cultural Center.

The U.S. Coast Guard came to the rescue of two Alabama residents whose single-engine plane splashed down in the Bahamas. What makes this small plane crash special: The plane had its own parachute.

Earlier this year I took a trip to Martinique, the Caribbean birthplace of the Empress Josephine:

If she returned to Martinique today, she would find a sophisticated French-influenced culture enhanced by the flavors and rhythms of the non-Europeans who have lived here for centuries. … Off the island’s Atlantic coast are the “baths of Josephine,” shallow turquoise waters where the young, would-be empress swam, according to local legend. It’s hard not to feel a bit decadent when the catamaran crew tosses a cooler containing a bottle of rum into the water with you.

The Miami Book Fair International opens Sunday, and among the many readings and presentations will be a handful of events focusing on a half-century of independence in the English-speaking Caribbean. Novelists, poets and researchers from Jamaica plus Trinidad and Tobago, and other islands, will consider whether their nations’ independence has lived up to its potential or changed the Caribbean identity.

Jamaican-born poet Shara McCallum told me that what makes Caribbean writers sound different is their layered use of language, equally fluent in standard English and in the island quirks of vocabulary and grammar.

“You’re going to hear orality, and patois or vernacular or creole,” McCallum says. “It’s not just an accent.”

For an example, McCallum suggested Derek Walcott’s poem “The Schooner Flight.” 

… Out in the yard turning gray in the dawn,
I stood like a stone and nothing else move
but the cold sea rippling like galvanize
and the nail holes of stars in the sky roof,
till a wind start to interfere with the trees. …

What does hurricane season look like? Kind of like this. The six-month Atlantic hurricane season officially ends Nov. 30.

My friend, kreyol teacher and Little Haiti icon Jan Mapou was filmed reading his poetry at his Miami bookshop, Libreri Mapou, during the O, Miami poetry festival this spring. His pen name comes from the Mapou tree, a symbol of strength. Mapou moved to the US after being released from the notorious Fort Dimanche prison, where “Papa Doc” Duvalier jailed him for publicly recommending that kreyol be taught in Haitian schools.

(Source: howpedestrian.ca)

Want to know what a narco-sub looks like? Here’s raw video from the US Coast Guard that officials say shows a semi-submersible, submarine-like craft that had been carrying $180 million of cocaine when it was intercepted off the Caribbean coast of Honduras. The vessel sank during the interdiction, and its five-man crew was detained. (What does $180 million of cocaine look like? The Coast Guard unloads all the drugs in Miami Beach in this video.)

“Narco-subs” are regularly used to smuggled drugs along Central America’s Pacific Coast. The Coast Guard says it has intercepted two of the subs in the Caribbean over the past couple months.