Republicans Prepared for Long-Shot Hurricane at Tampa Convention

Four years after a hurricane in Louisiana forced Republicans to make changes to their convention 1,300 miles away in Minnesota, they’ll nominate their next presidential candidate in Florida, among the most hurricane-prone states in the country.

Few hurricanes have hit Tampa, home to the Republican National Convention that starts Aug. 27, and odds are low it will happen during the four-day event when the party nominates Mitt Romney as its challenger to Democratic President Barack Obama. In one projection, a low-pressure system moving across the Atlantic develops into a tropical storm and makes landfall in Tampa during the convention, said Jeff Masters, founder of the Ann Arbor, Michigan-based Weather Underground. Meteorologists say predictions are unreliable more than a week in advance.