Hilton Head in South Carolina is about golf and retirement. Hugging the Atlantic ocean about an hour north of Savannah, Georgia, the town is a conglomeration of wooden homes and hotels, all of them designed for the appreciation of sunshine.
By yesterday morning there was no cliche which didn't apply to Hilton Head: Ghost town; Calm before the Storm; In the Eye of the Hurricane. The prospect of even a glancing blow from the fury of Hurricane Floyd had been enough to clean the town out.
"If it hits Hilton Head," said Jack Ferguson "there won't be a stick left. Just about everything is made of wood."
On Tuesday morning Jack and Sue Ferguson packed everything that mattered to them into their car and parked the car in the best-sheltered parking lot in town, hoping for the best.
Then they headed for the airport, Sue fretting because in the rush she had been unable to find the box which stored a couple of generations worth of family photographs. So it went. NASA evacuated Cape Canaveral, leaving four shuttles, worth $8 billion, in a flimsy hangar.
The Fergusons are pretty typical residents of Hilton Head. A working life in the cold north had granted them retirement in the southern sun.
They moved to South Carolina six years ago. When they left Hilton Head on Tuesday they were heading back to Cincinnati towards children and grandchildren.
The South Carolina Governor, Mr Jim Hodges, issued a mandatory evacuation order on Tuesday and, even in a region accustomed to having its version of paradise breached by such biblical interruptions, people heeded the order. Hilton Head and in turn Savannah and Charleston emptied, part of the evacuation of three million people who clogged the arteries of the south-east taking up all lanes of the highways as they poured slow as treacle towards safety.
By yesterday the mass movement of people from the south-east coast of America was as great a phenomenon as the hurricane itself.
In Hilton Head, even as the wind whipped itself up to something just a little more threatening than a strong breeze, the town literally turned out the lights when the last person left.
The electricity was switched off, the windows of every home were boarded in what residents recognised was an almost pathetic defence of wooden structures against 165 m.p.h. winds.
Notice was given that emergency services would be suspended until further notice. Hilton Head was left in the care of a small number of National Guardsmen posted to protect property from foolhardy looters.
The Westin Hotel resort is deserted and a notice giving a contact number in Atlanta suggests it will stay that way for 20 days. Every other hotel had done likewise.
Finally, the little airport shut after dusk on Tuesday and South Carolina hunkered down to watch Hurricane Floyd. The Fergusons, like their neighbours, are used to this ritual.
This is the sixth time in three years that hurricanes have sent people moving their belongings up stairs, away from floods, before boarding their houses and leaving.
"Used to be that people thought they could sit the things out," says Mr Ferguson "then you get to know what they mean when they talk about the size of them, this one being three times bigger than the last one and all. People learned."
They learned too the guilty sense of gratitude when the counter-clockwise swirl of a hurricane creeps past out at sea and makes landfall somewhere else.
By yesterday morning the south Carolina coast was pounded by rain and windswept but indications were that Hurricane Floyd would be hitting the Wilmington and Myrtle beach areas of North Carolina when it finally made landfall.
Wilmington went through the same process as Hilton Head. Five inches of rain fell in the eight hours before dawn. The great barns which service the home improvements industry were sold out of wood sheeting.
There wasn't a battery or a flashlamp to be purchased in the region as people worked by night and then fled inland to relatives, hotels and temporary relief centres set up in schools and community halls.
A pretty little coastal town, Wilmington underwent the same process as countless other communities. Everything which might move in the wind was brought indoors, lashed down or in many cases dumped into swimming pools.
Even safety inland could not be guaranteed. The course of previous hurricanes has whipped through inland cities like Charlotte and Raleigh. Hurricane Hugo, a modest gust in comparison with Floyd, brought down 80,000 trees in Charlotte 10 years ago.