I can tell you from personal experience that big storms are nothing to treat lightly.
When I was a child, Hurricane Betsy flooded streets in New Orleans to a depth of 8+ feet in some areas.
During that storm we had a sycamore tree fall and almost crashed into the house. Only a combination of lucky circumstances prevented it from doing so, but it was leaning over at about a 35-40 degree angle and its top limbs were directly over the peak of the roof. I remember helping my father hand-saw the branches from the top down so that we could eventually clear away the debris and prevent further damage. All we lost there was a window or two, but because it hit the power line on the side of the house, we had to wait for an electrician to come by and fix that connection for us. Took 13 days and Mom was absolutely frustrated.
Hurricane Camille missed us because it veered at the last moment. However, when we went to visit our family two weeks later, we could see many clusters of northern pine (tall, straight trunk) that had been bent over and the trunks were splintered. I'm told that the crews cleaning the fallen trees from the side of the road (what we call the road's right of way) took six months because so many trees were damaged or destroyed.
But then, there was Hurricane Katrina. The Navy had me evacuate with my family to Ft. Worth Texas the Sunday before it was projected to make landfall on Monday. When we got home a month later, we learned that the flood waters had stayed in place for 3 weeks due to pump damage. It took us 14+ months to live in the house again including a total renovation of the ground floor to remove all dry wall (no longer dry) and insulation (soaked for 6 or 7 feet due to capillary action). The carpets and floors were sodden wrecks. I lost a huge library of books (fiction AND music).
The part that hit me hardest visually was that on one of the main avenues in our area, trees had been uprooted because the ground had gotten so soaked (and thus so soft) that huge trees just fell over. Some beautiful trees were gone that my grandson (only had one at the time) would never see when he grew up. Don't know why that hit me and other things didn't. A touch of shock, perhaps.