Quiet Hurricane Season For New Orleans

New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf Coast this year enjoyed a quiet hurricane season, which ends today, as dire predictions by federal and university forecasters turned out to be wrong for the second consecutive year.

That was good news to the Army Corps of Engineers, as its contractors continued to raise levees throughout the New Orleans area -- some to the heights and strengths they should have been before Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005.

The corps also completed engineering work and issued the first contracts to improve hurricane protection to match its new understanding of the storm surge caused by hurricanes with a 1 in 100 chance of hitting the area in a given year.

Of 14 named storms in 2007, only four hit the U.S. coastline, with only one reaching hurricane strength.