Here's some more pics from my neighborhood:
It could have been a lot worse as the damage is almost all flooding. We didn't actually experience much in the way of wind, but a confluence of terrible factors caused Jacksonville to flood worse than it has in living memory:
-A pressure front from the north had caused rains ahead of time, meaning Jacksonville was saturated before the storm even arrived
-September tends to be the worst time of year as far as the moon's affect on the tides is concerned
-The outer band of Irma that did hit Jacksonville turned out to be much more severe than expected
-Hurricane Jose has been pushing water in the Atlantic westward, with Jacksonville sitting right at the crux between Georgia and Florida, causing a bottleneck of sorts
-The St John's River, meanwhile, is a rather rare north-flowing river that flows upwards through Jacksonville and smacks right into all of the water being pushed inland by the aforementioned factors.
The end result is that a community which was barely hit by Irma wound up getting hit worse than most of the Florida coast that was directly in its path. It may take weeks for the water to actually drain (I still can't access my apartment), not because it's deep but rather as it simply has nowhere to go.
It's rather sad, as I feel like I may have to move... for over a hundred years it's been about the most beautiful spot in Jacksonville, but over the past three hurricane seasons we've had a near miss, an extremely near miss with almost disasterous flooding, and now a full-blown flood disaster. It seems like the river is reclaiming the coast, and the beaches have been pummeled as well.
