Today marks the 15th anniversary of the night Hurricane Hugo roared into South Carolina and carved out a wide path of destruction.

Talk vividly remembers Hugo because we spent much of its overnight hours hiding under the bed as it barreled through Columbia. Oh sure, our pregnant wife chided us to climb out from under there and look out the window with her, but the one time we did, all we could see were the 15 pine trees in our yard bent over as if they were doing stretching exercises. It scared us so much that we jumped back under the bed and waited for them to crash simultaneously onto the house.

The howling wind was even scarier. It was so loud that it sounded as if the train at Rosewood and Assembly had taken a three-hour detour through our living room. When we got up out of the fetal position after it passed, we were thrilled to see not one tree had fallen on our house. Then we noticed that one of our trees had fallen on our neighbor’s house. It crashed right through the roof into their kitchen.

Oops.

They had to eat out for a couple of months. Fortunately, they didn’t hold it against us. Still, you aren’t going to see us having any 15th-anniversary parties.

Besides, it’s hard to get too worked up over Hugo when we spend all of our free time these days worrying about this recent batch of hurricanes. First Charley, then Frances, then Ivan. At least Jeanne doesn’t look like a threat.

We’re really sick of wondering how these hurricanes might affect us. Of course, it could be much worse. We could be living in Florida. And it could be our job to track these storms.

“Nobody is going to be happier to see hurricane season end than me,” said WLTX-TV chief meteorologist Jim Gandy, who notes that he has had a mere three days off since August began. “For a meteorologist, this year has been extremely frustrating. But it has been interesting.”

Gandy, as many of you may remember, correctly forecast Hugo’s landfall in Charleston back when he worked at WIS-TV. Other inept forecasters at the time were predicting it would hit anywhere from Brazil to Delaware, but our man Gandy nailed it.

That’s how he came to be recognized as “South Carolina’s Weatherman,” a title he probably has emblazoned on many of his boxer shorts.

“That was a pretty gutsy call,” Gandy admits now. “I didn’t have nearly the tools that I have to work with now.”

These days he tracks these seemingly nonstop storms with more high-tech equipment than you can shake a stick at.

“The errors in forecasting are a lot smaller,” he said. “The science has come an awfully long way.”

Given this recent spate of storms, it’s a good thing he has all of that equipment.

“I have never seen a hurricane season like this. I’ve seen a season that had more storms, but they didn’t affect the United States,” he said. “You probably have to go back to the 1920s or 1930s before you’d find a year comparable to this one.”

He admits that South Carolina has been lucky this year with Florida at ground zero. But our turn may be coming. Weather experts say this activity could go on for two more decades.

“So get used to this. We’re going to see a natural increase in the number of hurricanes,” said Gandy, a ’74 Florida State meteorology grad.

And if we have another hurricane season next year that’s similar to this year’s?

“I know I’ll be retiring early if we do,” he said.

No problem, Jim. You can always hide under the bed with us.

Call Talk at (803) 771-8643 or e-mail ntwhite@thestate.com.