“I don’t think anybody was ready for it,” Wilbar said. “Nobody was sandbagged up or taped up. It wasn’t supposed to be this.”

Wilbar got up before 2:00 on Sunday morning to check on his house during high tide. Storm surge sent five inches of water rushing into his garage — just a few inches shy from flooding during Hurricane Idalia and Ida.

“For it not being the midst of hurricane season and all that, there was as much water as we got before,” Wilbar said. “I was stunned. Nobody expected it.”

Ten miles south in Gulfport, it was a similar story. Many business owners spent Sunday morning cleaning up the mess left behind from flood waters that made their way up Beach Boulevard.

“I wasn’t expecting the surge to come in and it did,” said Melissa Loven, owner of Qi Crystal Energy. “A lot of us weren’t, actually. We didn’t sand bag the front, so we got some water in here - serious water - about three inches deep.”

Loven likes to keep her crystal shop clean and calm, so it can serve as a healing space for her customers. In the past three years, Loven’s store has been flooded four times. 

“I’ll say it’s very stressful,” she said. “My adrenaline gets me through it initially, but when it’s all said and done, it’s over, then I just kind of collapse. I feel like I could sleep for a couple of days afterwards.”

One thing that gets both Loven and Wilbar through each storm is knowing their neighbors always have their back and help each other out. 

“We’ll take a beat, just clean it up and do it again,” Wilbar said. “Your living here is a choice, and you just put up with it.”