Monitor Editor
GREEN COVE SPRINGS— Clay County Emergency Management Director John Ward told the county commission during its May 24 meeting that many people are asking him if this year’s hurricane season will be busy or slow. The director added that regardless of the number of named storms in 2022, it only takes one to impact Clay County.
“(Forecasters) are predicting an above-average season,” he told commissioners, “but I want to remind everyone…1992, going back a couple of years, that was a slow season. Tell the people down in south Florida that experienced Hurricane Andrew it was a slow season. It only takes one to impact our area.”
Ward added that the last major storm to impact Clay County was Irma, and that storm wasn’t even a hurricane by the time it reached north Florida.
“It was a subtropical system by the time it got to us,” he said. “It was still named a hurricane, but we did not have sustained (hurricane or tropical storm) winds. We did have some wind gusts, some tropical storm gusts but, I want to remind the citizens we saw the significant impact and the power outages and the flooding that was from that storm.”
