Hurricane Dorian (2019) — Sebastian, Florida

Hurricane Dorian affected Sebastian mostly through a week of warnings, evacuations and closures, because the storm stalled over the Bahamas and then passed offshore on September 3, 2019, bringing tropical storm gusts but no landfall (Sebastian Daily).

For several days Dorian looked like a direct threat to the Treasure Coast. On August 30, 2019, the National Hurricane Center's track pointed at landfall near West Palm Beach or Miami followed by a slow turn north, and Sebastian Daily wrote that Sebastian and Vero Beach would escape the worst only if the storm turned before crossing the state (Sebastian Daily). Instead Dorian parked over Grand Bahama as a Category 5 hurricane, and the turn came offshore.

What reached Sebastian was the storm's western edge. On the evening of September 3 a weather station at Sebastian Inlet measured a sustained wind of 43 mph and a gust of 57 mph (National Hurricane Center). Indian River County had already sent residents east of U.S. 1 and on the barrier island out of their homes, shut its bridges, schools and offices, and moved patients out of Sebastian River Medical Center. Most of that was reversed within 48 hours.

Sebastian went from a tropical storm warning on September 1, 2019 to a hurricane warning that evening, and Sebastian Inlet then served as a warning breakpoint until the NHC dropped coverage south of it on September 4 (NHC advisory 44).

The first warning arrived Sunday morning, September 1. Sebastian Daily reported at 8:22 a.m. that the National Hurricane Center had issued a tropical storm warning for areas near Sebastian Inlet including Grant, Micco, Barefoot Bay, Sebastian, Fellsmere and Vero Beach, with Dorian at Category 5 and 175 mph (Sebastian Daily). The 11 a.m. advisory set that warning from north of Deerfield Beach to Sebastian Inlet and added a hurricane watch up to the Volusia/Brevard County line (NHC advisory 33). By that evening a hurricane warning ran from Jupiter Inlet to the Volusia/Brevard County line, and Sebastian Daily cautioned that the warning did not mean Dorian would make landfall in Sebastian or Vero Beach (Sebastian Daily).

The NHC widened the hurricane warning on September 2 to run from Jupiter Inlet to the Flagler/Volusia County line (NHC advisory 37). At 5 a.m. on Wednesday, September 4, the warning south of Sebastian Inlet was discontinued, the hurricane warning from Sebastian Inlet to the Volusia/Brevard line was downgraded to a tropical storm warning, and a storm surge warning stayed in effect from Sebastian Inlet to Surf City, North Carolina (NHC advisory 44).

Indian River County ordered everyone living or staying east of US 1 in Sebastian, along with barrier island residents, to evacuate starting Monday, September 2, 2019, and lifted the order on September 3 (Sebastian Daily).

The order came on the morning of September 1, only about two hours after Sebastian Daily had reported that Indian River County had no mandatory evacuations yet (Sebastian Daily). County officials then applied it to all residents and visitors east of US1, citing a Category 5 storm with 175 mph winds forecast to make a close approach to east central Florida from Monday through Wednesday (Sebastian Daily). In Sebastian that line takes in the riverfront along Indian River Drive and the neighborhoods between U.S. 1 and the Indian River Lagoon.

The hospital moved first. Sebastian River Medical Center began evacuating on Sunday evening, September 1, and finished Monday afternoon, transferring its patients while the emergency room stayed open (Sebastian Daily). Along Indian River Drive, businesses had shut down and some residents had left by September 2 as Dorian's outer bands reached Sebastian (Sebastian Daily). North of the county line, Brevard County ordered its own evacuation of barrier island residents and mobile homes starting September 2, a few miles north of Sebastian (Sebastian Daily).

Sebastian got tropical storm force wind, rain bands and a brief tornado warning as Dorian passed well offshore on September 3, 2019, with the strongest measured gust at Sebastian Inlet reaching 57 mph (National Hurricane Center).

By 8 p.m. on Monday, September 2, Sebastian, Grant, Barefoot Bay, Micco, Fellsmere, Wabasso and Vero Beach had fallen out of the forecast cone, though the hurricane warning stayed up (Sebastian Daily). On Tuesday morning, September 3, Dorian had weakened to Category 3 with 120 mph winds and was still drifting northwest at 1 mph, 110 miles from West Palm Beach, and the forecast called for tropical storm force winds in Sebastian, Wabasso and Vero Beach (Sebastian Daily).

The NHC update at 7 p.m. that evening described the core moving nearly parallel to, but offshore of, the east coast of central Florida. A station at Sebastian Inlet had just reported a sustained wind of 43 mph and a gust of 57 mph, and a station at Indian River reported 38 mph sustained with a 55 mph gust (National Hurricane Center). Earlier, at 6:06 p.m., storms capable of producing a tornado stretched from 12 miles east of Satellite Beach to 6 miles northeast of Sebastian, and a tornado warning covered Sebastian, Barefoot Bay, Micco and Grant until 6:30 p.m. before it expired (Sebastian Daily).

Sebastian reopened within about a day of Dorian's closest pass, with city offices back on Wednesday, September 4, 2019, county offices on Thursday and Indian River County schools on Friday (Sebastian Daily).

Recovery started before the storm was gone. After the 11 a.m. advisory on September 3, the Indian River County Emergency Operations Center reopened the bridges and causeways to the barrier island and lifted the evacuation order, while keeping shelters open until the morning of September 4 (Sebastian Daily). Florida Power and Light reported fewer than one hundred homes in Indian River County without power at 11:20 a.m. that day, against the 17,000 workers FPL had told Sebastian Daily it had ready (Sebastian Daily).

On September 4, city offices in Sebastian, Fellsmere and Vero Beach reopened, GoLine buses ran again and garbage and yard waste pickup resumed across Indian River County (Sebastian Daily). The lasting physical mark was at Sebastian Inlet. The Sebastian Inlet District records that Matthew in 2016 and Dorian in 2019 eroded the north and south shorelines of the inlet channel; the district's repair rebuilt about 655 feet of North Shore shoreline and buried a relic steel seawall near the tide pool under limestone rip rap (Sebastian Inlet District). Dorian also cancelled a large community event the district had planned for September 2019 as part of its 100th anniversary.