When I was young my Grandmother wintered in Florida and came north in the summer. In the 40’s & 50’s Florida was a prescription for the relief of arthritis pain, which she suffered severly, so the minute the cool mornings appeared she packed and headed for the train station, where she bought her ticket. Waving good-bye was always sad, as it seemed everyday was special when she visited. She knew she was headed back to Florida to face hurricane season, but the relief from pain that the warm weather brought her, outweighed any thoughts she had of staying. . Years later when I moved to Florida one of my first questions to my new neighbors concerned hurricanes. They assured me that we were inland enough that we do get them but little damage is done. That has been true so far. I never thought I would be in Florida trying to get through to our children in NJ and NY to make sure they made it through the storm safely. They did, narrowly. One son had 10 trees down and five hit the house. No structural damage but oh what a clean up mess he has on his hands. Another had two trees down that wrapped around his vehilcles avoiding serious damage to the them. However, in both cases it was scary that they were outside trying to save the cars and get a generator out of a shed, when the wind picked up fiercely and trees started snapping. As I said fortunately they are safe as had they been hit by one of those trees it could have been very tragic. They both live in Northern New Jersey, directly west of New York City, close to the Pennsylvania border, and again I never thought I would be worring about them, I figured they would be worrying about me.  I am very thankful and am hoping all your family and friends located in the North East were as fortunate as my family and made it safely through.