I was here for Frances and Jeanne back in 2004. Cat 2 and Cat 3, both eyes went over our neighborhood. 125mph winds in Jeanne clocked by a neighbor. Some of the out buildings were damaged, and we all lost screens from the screen enclosures. Most of the houses were built after 2000, but a few were mid nineties. I have solar heating for my pool, and the panels stayed on fine. Lost some trees, and every house in the neighborhood was an island, there was perhaps 3” of water on the roads. I’m 18 miles inland, at an elevation of 21’, no danger from storm surge, but Florida is so flat there is nowhere for the water to go, so we flood very easily, even with a heavy thunderstorm.
By far the worst for us was, between the two hurricanes we were out of power for just over a month combined. We are the very last to get hooked up in our area, not being in town.
Doubt I will ever bug out, I now have easily deployed shutters, a 20kw whole house generator with1250 gallons of propane. next on the list is solar panels, good to have lots of backups. I can charge my car even when the power is out, and don’t have to deal with gas stations and lines, very nice indeed.
All bets are off if you get a tornado spawned by the hurricane, or, god forbid, it’s a cat 5 that parks itself over you for 24+ hours as it did over poor Bermuda. God bless them.
So there's still some risk, but no more than living back in KY with tornado risks in the spring.
