Hurricanes and even tropical storms are similar to tornadoes in some ways. After Fran there were people who didn't experience any damage and they insisted Fran was a 'non-event.' I lost a 100 year old live oak tree, a fence, and my rear windshield on my car (a separate tree landed on my car when it fell). I had friends who suffered major damage. I couldn't drive down the road to check my house for almost 2 days due to the trees that were down and the debris everywhere. We didn't have power for 2 days. A friend of mine went without power for a week until their neighborhood could be gotten to. Yet some folks suffered no power outage and no damage at all. It really is a hit or miss type of thing. Swirling winds can totally bypass one house and destroy one in a neighbor nearby. On my way to work this morning I passed a beautiful home with a tree ontop of it. That was all the way up in Jamestown, NC. I'm sure they don't consider Ernesto a 'non-event.'


>>Ernesto was a big non-event, wasn't it? But then you never know.
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>It was in a sense in So. Florida. It was less than expected but still a Tropical Storm. You have to be always prepared and we were. Still we got hit :(
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>We had two brownouts for a second or so each during the storm. The second one killed my air conditioning fan so we spent a day+1/2 without a/c, then we got a repairman and a new motor. The good news, it now works better, quieter than before. The bad news: $500 unbudgeted dollars spent. Oh well. (eh! maybe I should ask FEMA for storm damage compensation!).