Hurricanes have been a topic here since 2005, when I personally was affected by Katrina and shared a lot of my experience with you. However, there has not been a major hurricane—a category 3 or above—to hit the United States since that eventful year. I suppose that technically is true still. Hurricane Matthew, a category 3 hurricane when it approached southeastern Florida last week, did not make landfall there. As we all know, it skirted the Atlantic seaboard until the eyewall finally touched ground in South Carolina. By then, Matthew was a category 1 storm. Yes, we did get lucky. Had Matthew been a category 5 storm on the path it took, or even a category 4 as it was when it hit poor Haiti, we probably would be dealing with the greatest natural disaster in our nation’s history. Or if the storm, as it was, had tracked 20 or 30 miles closer to shore, the damage would have been far greater. However, I say all that to say this: Matthew was a remarkably unique hurricane. By hugging the coastline, its impact amounted to a landfalling hurricane from near Palm Beach, Florida, to Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. While not the rolling catastrophe that might have been, the damage is great, far greater than we know from watching clips on television and the internet. The dollar damage will be historic, and there are personal catastrophes aplenty. This storm was not oversold. We got very, very lucky.
