There are three tropical storms in the Atlantic right now, Hanna, Ike and Josephine.
We are coming up on peak hurricane season.
Flow off Africa suggests there may be 2-3 more disturbances coming up behind those, which could develop into tropical storms.
Long range forecasts are generally poor, too many ways in which a small angular deflection of near future trajectories could change long term trajectory drastically, but current projections suggest Hanna will scoot up the east coast, probably as a weak cat 1-2 hurricane, hitting land anywhere between maybe north Florida and North Carolina, with large error currently in exact trajectory.
Hurricane Ike looks to follow a similar trajectory, depending on what Hanna leaves behind in its wake, but may be stronger and may go across Florida into the gulf of Mexico.
Josephine's trajectory is unpredictable right now, could curve to sea to Iceland or NW Europe, or could go south of Cuba like Gustav or anywhere in between.
But, there is a distinct possibility of 2-3 hurricanes impacting SE USA over a period of a little over a week.
Current NHC 5day forecast for Hanna and Ike (click for larger)
The scary thing is what happens if a couple of storms come in short succession over, say, east Florida?
Current NHC 5 day forecast for Ike and Josephine (click for large)
The tendency for large storms to follow each other if close enough, but not too close, is real - the wake is low pressure guidance channel with some persistence - but there will be some deflection as high pressure builds in.
If the first storm comes in further up north, it can badly mess up the north-south coastal interstate, choking traffic. eg. if a medium sized hurricane came in north of the I-75 and south of the I-10, from the east.
A strong second storm coming in further south could lead to a need for evacuating the larger cities in south east florida, but with major roads going north already partially blocked and population dislocated to the north and west.
That would be a very bad and dangerous mess.
Coincidentally, I am headed for Florida in a couple of weeks.
Weather permitting.
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In terms of loss of life, one of the worst-case scenarios would be a hit on Miami followed by a major hurricane through the Keys. I don't know if this is still true, but when I lived in south Florida (1970s and 1980s) the hurricane evacuation plan for the Keys was to send everybody north of the Seven Mile Bridge up to Miami (south of there everyone evacuates to Key West, which has enough elevation to deal with a moderate storm surge). On the mainland there would be hurricane shelters inland for people too close to the coast, but south of Florida City there is no inland to evacuate to. The flaw in this plan is that if Miami is already toast there is nowhere for Upper Keys folks to go. Also the estimated evacuation time for the Keys was 28 hours (then; it may be longer now), so the evacuation order would have to go out as soon as the hurricane watch was issued.
What would you be going to Florida for, anyway? Other than Cape Canaveral, I mean.