The most common weather hazards faced in Florida are hurricanes, tornadoes, fires, floods, waterspouts, rip currents, high temperatures, and lightning during thunderstorms. Florida experiences an average of 1.4 million cloud-to-ground lightning strikes each year, easily earning it the title "Lightning Capital of the United States." Florida has more thunderstorms than anywhere else in the United States and North America. All thunderstorms are considered dangerous because they contain lightning and can produce damaging winds, heavy rain that can cause flooding, tornadoes and hail. Marine weather conditions are generally nice and calm, but can change suddenly. Rip currents are especially dangerous because they can drag unprepared swimmers away from shore and into deeper water offshore. Hurricanes and tropical storms can bring very dangerous weather to areas near the coast, including strong winds, coastal storm surges and flooding, heavy rain flooding, and tornadoes. For those far from the immediate coast, inland flooding and tornadoes often represent the most dangerous impacts of these systems (“Dangerous Weather: A Guide to Florida”). With the addition of the weather, all the negative issues should give you plenty of reasons to avoid living permanently