Would somebody tell me again, please, why Constellation Energy wants to get mixed up with Florida Power & Light?  Here's Constellation, based in Maryland, which hasn't seen a storm make a direct strike on its territory, at hurricane force, in like, forever. And here's FPL, which this year alone set a new record for outages from one storm. Hurricane Wilma caused 3.2 million FPL outages in October, about three-quarters of everybody that buys juice from that outfit.

And that came on top of Katrina, in August, which knocked out power to 1.4 million FPL customers - probably lots of the same people who later went dark again in Wilma.

OK, so it was a bad year. But wait. In 2004, 5.4 million FPL customers lost power in three hurricanes. Jeanne (1.7 million); Frances (2.8 million) and Charley (874,000).

I'm not making this up. It's from FPL's own Website .  And, while the record is no doubt incomplete, you should add in Irene (1999), which doused the lights for 1.4 million, or 45 percent of FPL's customers; Andrew (1992) which did the same. We won't mention Betsy in 1965 (49 percent), Cleo in 1964 (68 percent) or Donna in 1960 (51 percent). These repairs cost a fortune in manpower, overtime, accommodations, contractors and materials.

Look at the map, people. Florida is a peninsula. It sticks out into the I-95 of hurricane tracks. People are moving out of the place because they're sick of boarding up their windows, rebuilding their roofs and living out of ice chests. 

And what's the hurricane forecast like?  Hurricane specialists virtually everywhere say we're one decade into what they expect will be several decades of increased hurricane activity in the Atlantic. Here's Bill Gray's forecast for an active 2006. The 2005 Atlantic hurricane season was a record-breaker, with 26 names tropical storms and 14 hurricanes if I remember rightly.

I'm sure the two companies considered much bigger issues when they reached their decision to merge. Maybe FPL wanted an anchor someplace where customers keep paying because their meters keep spinning. Maybe that's why I'm not in mergers and acquisitions. But you can bet Constellation stockholders will have a different perspective on things when Florida goes dark again during the 2006 hurricane season.