If you're reading this, I survived what could have been a severe hurricane.

Let me explain myself: my name is Irene, I'm sixteen years old, I live in Florida, and my state got hit by Hurricane Irma.

Everyone has a different story of their experiences with natural disasters, so I'm here to tell mine. This will be a long story. I started this story on Wednesday, September 6th, and I will try to write my observations. This is my second hurricane experience, but I barely remember much about Hurricane Wilma back in 2005.

On Wednesday and Thursday, I put up the window shutters with my parents. My state was in a state of emergency since Monday, so we had lots of time to prepare. I also happened to be really sick too, and nobody wants to be sick during a hurricane. I even had a horrible stomach ache on Sunday, it lasted days.

One unsettling thing I noticed was that all of the birds were gone. Birds are everywhere around here, I see them in my backyard all the time.

My district had a mandatory evacuation, but my family couldn't leave because of our business. Half of my friends and neighbors had evacuated already.

The updates on Hurricane Irma were always changing. It was a Category 5 Hurricane, and now it's Category 4. It was supposed to directly hit the East Coast, and now reporters say it might directly hit us the most. I live in Naples, in the West Coast, but not too far from the beach. All of Florida was impacted by this hurricane. My cousins live near the beach, so they were staying with us.

Usually people in Florida aren't too worried about Hurricanes, but Irma scared most of us. On Monday, stores had already started running out of food and water. They say it's bigger than the state of Ohio. It's even bigger than Hurricane Andrew from 1992.

It started raining on Saturday, not much else happened. Sunday, however, was very serious. The winds became much stronger, to the point where it was literally howling as it hits our window shutters. The rain was so severe that the lake behind our house made waves like the beach waves at the ocean.

The power is completely off, as well as the wifi. We're using candles, lanterns, and flashlights for light sources. School is cancelled for all of next week. Apparently we get the most damage... the storm surge is up to 15 feet. That is enough to make my house flood. Our loved ones call us to make sure we stay safe, and we hear from the radio for future updates.

One of the window shutters broke off... luckily, it's a small window in a bathroom, so hopefully nothing bad happens. Time passes by so slowly.. and yet there's that thought in the back of my mind that there will be serious damage. My cousins and I watch Studio Glibli movies to make the time pass, we watched "Spirited Away". It's one of my favorite movies. Some of us pray for the hurricane to not give much damage.

When the eye of the hurricane is in our area, we went outside to check how severe it was. The roads were flooded, some trees fell, three window shutter panels disappeared, however, we only found one.

The hurricane is over. Five of our shutters fell in total, but one is missing. Irma changed it’s path and weakened, so damage is much better than people thought it would be!!

The aftermath of a hurricane is the worst. No power, no air conditioning, no wifi. And it gets so hot and humid in Florida. I ran out of power for five days and I felt like I was going to die! Wifi was out for eight days. Both the wifi and the power were on and off after that.

I’m writing this on the 25th, and I just went back to school today. People are still stressed, but many of us (including me) have volunteered to help others out. We will recover well! Thanks for reading NCT Night Night.