As the days stretch into months after Tampa Bay’s most destructive hurricane season in a century, the lonely slog of recovery has only just begun. Coping grows harder as the early hours of adrenaline fade into the purgatory of getting by. Housing is scarce. Endless paperwork bleeds into numbing hours on hold.

Tampa Bay – the nation's most vulnerable metro area to storm surge – could be about to see its worst flooding in over a century.

If you’ve driven around Tampa Bay since the hurricanes, you’ve seen downed trees in the thousands. Many had a story. There was the oak in Clearwater that shaded a home at sunset, keeping energy costs down.