Forget about cones of danger, storm shutters and supply kits -- for six months, anyway.

The 2008 Atlantic hurricane season officially ends Sunday.

Despite a few close calls and a drenching from Tropical Storm Fay, Florida escaped the season mostly unscathed. Our Caribbean neighbors were less fortunate, with Cuba and Haiti getting pounded by a succession of major hurricanes.

''This will probably go down as a nonmemorable year for Florida and a catastrophic year for Haiti and Cuba,'' National Hurricane Center Director Bill Read said. ``But we came very close here a couple of times. Any small change in steering currents could have brought us a direct hit.''

As it turned out, Florida's only direct hit came from Fay, a meandering, wet mess that flooded parts of Central and North Florida during its mid-August trek across the state.

Fay made history for being the first Atlantic tropical storm to make four separate landfalls in Florida: on Aug. 18 in Key West, Aug. 19 in Cape Romano, Aug. 21 in Flagler Beach and Aug. 23 in Carrabelle.

A major hurricane hasn't struck Florida since Hurricane Wilma in 2005, but Read said he isn't worried that the state has let its guard down. He pointed to Hurricane Ike, which had South Florida squarely in its cross hairs in early September before veering away on a more southerly path through Cuba.

''When Ike was posing a threat here, people started to pay attention, test their generators and shutters, add to their supplies, gas up their cars,'' Read said. ``That's exactly what we expect people to do, and I really thought they responded well.''

Florida's luck this hurricane season was due in part to high-pressure systems that formed over the state and steered away storms, Read said. Those bursts of high pressure came at the right times for Florida, but they also helped push the storms into the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean.

Four consecutive storms raked Haiti in August and September: Fay and Hurricanes Gustav, Hanna and Ike. The driving rains and resulting mudslides flooded towns and crumbled infrastructure, killing more than 800 people and causing billions of dollars of damage that experts say will take years to repair.

Fay, Gustav and Ike also ripped through Cuba, which then endured a late-season hit from Hurricane Paloma this month. The country's civil defense system issued mandatory evacuations to vulnerable areas, which are believed to have kept casualties to a minimum. But damage to roads and homes and buildings is present in several of the island's provinces.

''It's sad that the two poorest countries in the hemisphere -- Haiti and Cuba -- are the ones that got the most catastrophic damage,'' said professor Andy Gomez, a senior fellow at University of Miami's Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies. ``The impact in both countries is going to be long-standing.''

Haiti's recovery is likely to go smoother than Cuba's because Haiti has welcomed aid from the United States and other nations, but ''Cuba is trying to play hardball,'' Gomez said.

''If they are willing to accept outside aid, it will make the process easier,'' he said. ``The truth is, these are two countries that have become used to these kinds of disasters and having few resources available to recover.''

Recovery efforts also continue to a lesser extent in coastal parts of Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi that were affected by Gustav and Ike.

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