SouthFlorida.com | City Link Magazine

If you thought last year's hurricane season was about as bad as it could get, brace yourself: Based on forecasters' predictions, this season, which officially begins Thursday, could be just as miserable, if not worse. As the Sun-Sentinel reported last week, eight to 10 hurricanes are expected to form, four to six of them as intense as our old friends Katrina, Rita and Wilma. Those numbers could be even higher, though, given the fact that forecasters had predicted only seven to nine hurricanes last season, yet 15 developed by year's end.

So what's a hurricane-weary South Floridian supposed to do? Our advice: Start drinking.

In honor of the 2006 hurricane season, we have created 13 alcoholic beverages to help you weather the storms, power outages, gas lines, cold showers, television withdrawals, price gougers and every other aggravation hurricanes bring. We can't promise that these libations will erase the pain of watching your roof peel away and your streets fill up with sewage, but they sure as hell will dull it till the men with the tarps -- or straitjackets -- arrive.