The 2024 hurricane season is off to an active start and experts expect it to continue, which is concerning Fort Myers Beach residents.
Susan Carter was a proud Fort Myers Beach resident for three decades.
“We lost 12 houses on this street,” she said, referring to Pearl Street. “So all of my routine, my. My network. Gone.”
She made the tough decision to pack up and leave after Hurricane Ian claimed her home.
“It didn't look so bad when you stood out here, the house was still there,” she said. “Then we managed to shoulder the door open, and I opened it, and it was horrible.”
Most of what she owned was ruined. All but two irreplaceable things, pictures she saved in waterproof packaging and a memory of her late husband.
“When Gage Goulding interviewed me as we were coming to the street I went and got my husband's ashes and pictures and some keepsakes,” she said.
ABC7 was there to capture this moment. Susan said that was her turning point.
Alexia Tsiropoulos: “Let me ask you this: would you go through it again? Or is that why you're choosing not to return?”
Susan Carter: “ Well, one, I can't afford it. And driving onto the island and seeing it really hurts. But emotionally, for me, this was 30 years of my neighbors. Every Thanksgiving we had under Eddie's house, every Christmas, and Superbowl, we were a little community.”
She does not want to go through another hurricane alone.
Psychologist Laura Streyffler said that is a normal response after experiencing trauma.
“But the only way to help your anxiety is to prepare the best you can to control the things that you can,” Streyffler said. “And if you don't, maybe have to go someplace else for a short time and take care of yourself.”
Susan thought of her healing as an adventure.
“I'm 75 years old,” Carter said. “I want to have fun. For the last 25 or 30 years, I have left. I'm not going to be rebuilding from a hurricane. Not going to happen to me. So, if I have to leave Florida, that's what I will do. I hate to say it, but mother nature always wins, and she's pissed."
Experts like the chief meteorologist at Weather Tiger Forecasting, Ryan Truchelut, spend their time studying hurricanes, and he agrees.
“There certainly is an above-average risk of landfall in the United States in general this year,” he said.
Truchelut said hurricanes are coming earlier in the season. They will be stronger and more consistent.
“We know that a couple of ways,” he said. “Number one, it's likely that last year's El Nino event that kind of kept the lid on last year's hurricane season is now transitioning over slowly. That makes those upper-level winds kind of more favorable for storms to develop, especially in the Gulf Caribbean and the western Atlantic, closer to the continental United States.”
Those conditions starting in July typically predict an active season to follow.
“Those favorable conditions tend to persist into August and September,” Truchelut. “So the fact that we've had a storm like Beryl that took advantage of those favorable conditions very early in the season, tends to signal that those favorable conditions will continue to be there for other storms down the road.”
Susan chooses to stay positive, even though Ian took nearly everything from her. But it also gave her something in return.
“A new beginning, and it's turned out to be better than my wildest dreams,” Carter said. “Better than I could have imagined. And I know that my husband in my heart helped me through it, you know?”