The aftermath of Florence left Greensboro wet and muddy, but it was nowhere close to the amount of flooding coastal cities have received. This has many wondering why they left Greensboro in the first place.

In anticipation for Hurricane Florence, Twitter and other social medias blew up with funny memes, preparation advice, and people expressing their worries for Florence. One parody account @HurricaneFloo was made ahead of the storm. It posted updates of the storms and snarky comments like, “Sorry for trashing the place in advance.” Many instate students expressed their jealousy of out of state students who evacuated home while they had to stay in North Carolina.

Florence was expected to be the worst hurricane Greensboro has seen since the 80s. This sent many into a frenzy on whether to stay at N.C. A&T to fight through the hurricane or flee.

Florence devastated many along the coast in cities like Wilmington, NewBern, and Columbia.

Greensboro is 200 miles inland, but it was still expected to get several inches of flooding and 10 inches of rain according to the North Carolina Flood Risk Information System.

N.C. A&T canceled classes after Governor Roy Cooper declared a state of emergency. The original cancellation of classes was to start Wednesday after noon and classes were to resume the following Monday. Sunday night, students received an email stating classes would be canceled until eight a.m. Tuesday morning. With classes canceled and campus looking like a desert, it became a waiting game.

For the rest of the school week, the sky was clear with a few clouds in the sky. On Friday, it started to rain on and off, and this continued until Monday when the sun came back out.

Thankfully, Florence did not live up to it’s expected hype, but this did disappoint many students who left to prepare for a hurricane that never came. Many N.C. A&T students had to decide whether to stay through the storm or to make their trips back home.

For students that stay in surrounding cities and states, the decision to leave came easy, but for out of state students, it proved to be much harder to decide whether or not to go home.

Many students also could not go home because the last minute decision to cancel classes made it harder to find a decent price for a flight back home. “I couldn’t go home. The plane ticket back home was over 500 dollars,” Nyjah Raymond, a said sophomore criminal justice student.

Those who stayed have a sense of relief Greensboro only got light rain, but many are upset they spent so much money on preparations for Florence. Students purchased sandbags, flashlights, water, batteries, and nonperishable food items. These are costly items to buy on a student salary, and with little time to do so, there were not many places to with all the items available.

The flooding of major highways in North Carolina made it difficult for students who did leave to get back to school on Monday. “The buses said the furthest they would go is Virginia… I had to wait for the flooding to go down to get back to school,” said Emmani Lemaire a freshman undeclared student. Major highways such as interstate

Interstate 95 and 40 remained flooded and closed almost a week after Hurricane Florence had dispersed. Other highways are closed like Route 74 right outside of Wilmington, North Carolina.

Even though Florence did not devastate  Greensboro, this does not take away from the seriousness of hurricanes or any natural disasters. They should be taken seriously and planned for accordingly.

When classes resumed many at N.C. A&T talked about how Florence did not touch Greensboro. This had many students who evacuated left saying, “I should have stayed.”