<p>The department's alliance with The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Weather Service creates a teaching environment with the nation's meteorology leaders.</p>
<p>University administrators boast the department is the most complete meteorology program in the southeastern United States. About 200 undergraduate students and nearly 90 graduate students were enrolled last fall.</p>
<p>But one day last week, the topic in Buddy Jordan's current weather discussion class was hurricanes.</p>
<p>"The reason I teach hurricanes is because it's hurricane season," Jordan said. "They don't get a lot of hurricane experience."</p>
<p>Jordan hopes that the group of juniors and seniors in his class grasp the complexities of the whole process that involves meteorology.</p>
<p>"Atmosphere is not simple," he said. "The atmosphere is chaotic. It doesn't represent complete order."</p>
<p>For some students, that chaotic dynamic has proven to be the biggest draw in studying meteorology.</p>
<p>"I've lived in Florida and Kansas. That's the two extreme weather places," Landon Alexander, 21, said about his reason for becoming a meteorology major.</p>
<p>He thinks Kansas tornadoes are more dangerous than Florida's hurricanes because of the unpredictably factor.</p>
<p>Last week, the group's biggest interest was stayed on the record-breaking news involving Hurricane Felix.</p>
<p>Jordan said hethinks Felix set a record in the amount of time it took to go from a tropical depression to a Category 5 hurricane. It took 51 hours, he said. Felix followed another Category 5 storm - Hurricane Dean.</p>
<p>"That is highly unusual," Jordan said. "To get two back-to-back is ... unusual to say the least."</p>
<p>But the back-to-back nature of the 2004 hurricane season is what attracted 25-year-old Jacqueline Rubio. The Orlando resident became interested in the weather after hurricanes Charley, Frances and Jeanne.</p>
<p>With the unpredictably of the weather comes surprises, Jordan said.</p>
<p>"We thought 2004 was bad but I never thought we'd see a season of 28 storms - 15 hurricanes and four Category 5s in one year," Jordan said.</p>
<p>That illustrates the 2005 hurricane season which led to the inevitable partnership of meteorology and the plight of human conditions.</p>
<p>"No matter how much you study, you don't expect to see what you can see - a train wreck comes in many ways," Robert Hart, assistant meteorology professor, said. "Sometimes you feel like people's memories are too short."</p>