North Carolina's history, the kind you'll find in school books, is vibrant. Impressive also is the amount of destruction past hurricanes have wrought on the Tar Heel State.

"It was just amazing how strong the storm was,” said Robert Bodnar.

Bodnar is a walking history book when it comes to hurricanes. "You could feel the roof actually shaking. It was just so strong of a wind."

Through these pictures, he's documented both Fran and Floyd's aftermath in the Triangle.

"The thing I remember most is it rained so much and such a wide area was affected,” Bodnar said. “It seemed like no matter where you went, trees were down, or something would have happened."

Fran and Floyd are fresh in many of our minds, but our state's history with fierce storms goes further back than Bodnar's collection.

"The 1950's brought us Hurricane Hazel and several others,” said author Jay Barnes. “We had Donna in 1960. And when you go farther back into the early 20th century there were a lot of other storms that didn't have names that were quite destructive."

Barnes is the author of "North Carolina's Hurricane History". Like Robert Bodnar, he chronicles the "big ones".

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Hazel, the only Category 4 hurricane to strike North Carolina in the 20th century, killed 19 people and destroyed 15,000 homes in 1954.

Six years later it was Donna's turn, claiming eight lives and causing $25 million in damage.

While Hazel and Donna primarily impacted coastal regions, more recent storms have spread their destruction across a much broader path

According to Barnes, "During Hurricane Hugo, Hurricane Fran and Hurricane Floyd that some of the most significant destruction occurred pretty far way from the coast in the inland areas."

Fran, in 1996, claimed the lives of 24. Category One force winds lashed locations as far west as RDU Airport and Fayetteville

Fifty-one people perished in 1999 at the hands of Floyd.

"The recent experience we've had with Fran and Floyd has taught us different kinds of lessons in these storms will be remembered by our children and our grandchildren as the storm of their generation,” Barnes continued.

September 18, 2003 began cloudy in our part of the state as the sprawling storm known as Isabel surged toward the North Carolina coast. Making landfall just south of Ocracoke Island 1pm, the heaviest rain and most devastating wind associated with Isabel occurred in a path from Morehead City to Greenville to Roanoke Rapids and points east to the Outer Banks. 15 people along the Eastern Seaboard were killed as a result of the storm, property damage was estimated at 4 billion dollars in several states.

The waters today off Atlantic Beach are very quiet but it’s only a matter of when, not if, the next big storm will strike NC. The question is - have we learned enough from the past to be prepared for the big storm of the future?

Bodnar says he's ready and waiting with camera in hand. "Yes, I do have film in the camera, and it’s ready just in case, you never know."