2022
Hurricanes Ian & Nicole
Two late-season storms brushed Northeast Florida within weeks of each other, bringing wind, rain, more dune erosion along Ponte Vedra and the Beaches, and another round of scattered outages across the First Coast.
Data & history
First Coast power outage history
Jacksonville spent decades thinking the coastline sheltered it. The record says otherwise. Here is the run of storms and floods that have taken the grid down across Duval, St. Johns, Clay, and Nassau counties, and why so many First Coast homeowners now keep a standby generator.
500k+
JEA customers who lost power during Hurricane Irma (2017)
28.5 ft
Record Black Creek crest in Clay County during Irma, breaking a 1923 mark
~350 ft
Length of the Jacksonville Beach Pier torn away by Hurricane Matthew (2016)
Days to a week
Typical restoration across the hardest-hit First Coast neighborhoods
The storms that took the First Coast dark
2017
Hurricane Irma
The defining First Coast outage event of the modern era. Irma pushed the St. Johns River to record levels and flooded downtown Jacksonville, San Marco, and Riverside. Roughly half a million JEA customers lost power, some for close to a week. In Clay County, Black Creek crested at a record 28.5 feet, inundating homes across Middleburg and Orange Park, and St. Augustine saw its historic district flood again just a year after Matthew.
2016
Hurricane Matthew
Matthew tracked just offshore as a major hurricane and raked the coast. It tore roughly 350 feet off the Jacksonville Beach Pier, carved away dunes at Ponte Vedra and Amelia Island, undermined stretches of A1A, and knocked out power to a large share of Northeast Florida. It was the storm that ended the idea that Jacksonville was hurricane-proof.
2008
Tropical Storm Fay
Fay was not even a hurricane, but it stalled over Florida and dumped extraordinary rain on the First Coast, flooding low-lying neighborhoods and creeks and cutting power in spots. A reminder that a slow tropical storm can do what a fast hurricane does not.
2004
Frances & Jeanne
The brutal 2004 season sent Frances and Jeanne across the state weeks apart. Northeast Florida caught tropical-storm-force winds and rain from both, with tree damage and outages that stretched crews thin twice in one month.
1964
Hurricane Dora
The historic benchmark. Dora made a rare direct landfall near St. Augustine as a hurricane, battering the coast from Vilano Beach to the Jacksonville area with surge and winds that older residents still measure new storms against.
Figures compiled from JEA and utility restoration reports, NOAA and National Hurricane Center summaries, National Weather Service river-gauge data (Black Creek), and local reporting (The Florida Times-Union, First Coast News, WJXT). Outage counts are peak or regional approximations; the point is the pattern of long, repeated, multi-county outages. Journalists and researchers are welcome to cite this page with attribution; email us for the underlying storm-by-storm figures.
Why the First Coast over-indexes on backup power
Northeast Florida sits in an awkward spot. It is far enough north that direct hits are rarer than in South Florida, which bred a false sense of safety, but it is wrapped around the low, slow St. Johns River basin and fronted by barrier islands. When a storm stalls or tracks up the coast, the water backs into downtown Jacksonville, the historic district in St. Augustine, and the creek systems in Clay County instead of draining to the sea.
The grid follows the geography. JEA, FPL, Clay Electric, Beaches Energy, and Florida Public Utilities each cover a piece of the region, and a big storm can take several of them down at once across a sprawling metro that is slow to restore. Since Matthew and Irma landed a year apart, a permanently installed standby generator has moved from a luxury toward standard equipment here: it starts on its own, runs on natural gas or propane, and keeps a home livable through the days these counties have learned to expect.
The pattern is why we exist. Wondering whether it is worth it for your home? Read: do you need a standby generator? Or see the First Coast hub and your city page for local detail.
Don't ride out the next one in the dark
Get a free, no-pressure quote from a vetted installer across the First Coast, or call now to talk it through.