I made it through another hurricane!

Hurricane Matthew has come and gone.

I live in Jacksonville, FL, and we were in the path of the hurricane. The beaches were told to evacuate beforehand, and many other residents were advised to evacuate. Things were looking grim for us.

Now, to give you some info... there's something about how the coastline juts out in NE Florida that protects it from getting badly hit by hurricanes. They come our way, but never seem to be too bad.

Fortunately, before hitting our area, Matthew jogged off to the East a little bit. The beaches were hit hard! We lost the Jacksonville Beach Pier. I understand that there was flooding. 

For me, the beaches are a 20-30 minute drive, depending on traffic. So, I guess I'm 15-20 miles inland. However, the St. John's River is at the end of the street I live on. The hurricane passed through the area Friday afternoon. We lost power (expected) around noon. LOTS of rain and wind.

Fortunately, there was no real damage to our yard and no damage to our house. We mostly had a lot of limbs and debris to pick up. Our next door neighbor did not fare as well. A small oak tree fell on the corner of their house. No one was hurt! Another oak fell over their driveway. The rest of the street mostly just had what we had... debris to clean up, though someone had their car buried under a small tree. 

We've all done our clean up, and there are a lot of tree limbs on the curb to be picked up! We got our power back around noon on Saturday, but I understand that power is still not on for some people in our general area. Lots of debris down on the roads, and work crews got out on Saturday and did a lot of "cut and toss", where they cleared the road of fallen trees & limbs, but just tossed them on the side to be picked up later.

Jacksonville has once again come through another hurricane. We might be battered, but people are okay, and that's what matters.

Edit: I almost deleted this, feeling it was kind of "light". This post reflects my experiences and observations. Hurricane Matthew was a massive storm. I heard yesterday that 35 lives were lost in total. I haven't heard about injuries. There was massive damage. We will be weeks and months recovering. There is so much debris piled high at the curb that it's difficult to back out of the driveway, and it's difficult to turn off my street. It's that way all around this area. I can't imagine what the beaches are actually like. I just felt like maybe I left an impression that yeah, the storm blew through but we're all okay now! A friend of mine who only lives a few miles away has been without power for almost a week. We will be some time in recovering.

I didn't post any photos because I didn't take any photos. It was too dangerous to go out in the storm. As far as the aftermath, I'd rather respect people's privacy and not take photos. Go to www.news4jax.com  to learn more about the storm and to see photos. They did an excellent job of covering the storm for our area.