coffee addict,
I think your perception of Hurricane Irma as a dud is not because of the actual storm impact, which was quite large, but because the storm was the most media hyped hurricane in history. Hurricane Irma had the potential to be much more catastrophic, but Florida got a few good bounces: the brush with Cuba disrupted the inner core of the hurricane, weakening the storm and preventing substantial restrengthening over the hot waters of the Gulf of Mexico, the storm became increasingly asymmetric due to increasing shear and the interaction with Cuba, so the offshore flow on the north side (pushing water away from Tampa Bay and other heavily populated Gulf Coast areas) was stronger than the onshore flow on the backside of the hurricane – which mitigated storm surge impacts along the Gulf Coast. Also, the hurricane took a substantial northward lurch after moving away from Cuba, resulting in a landfall south of Naples and an inland track along the I-75 corridor, which lessened impacts to areas such as Tampa, St. Petersburg, and Tallahassee. A track right along the Gulf Coast would have been worse. Finally, a bunch of cold air got entrained into the storm (note that much of Georgia was in the 50s on Monday, and even northern Florida was in the low 60s… certainly not hurricane-friendly temperatures!) which promoted rapid weakening.
That said, the middle Keys and Naples area suffered substantial damage from Irma’s inner core, and the wind field was quite large, so despite the track well to the west, Irma produced robust and long-lasting tropical storm conditions (sustained winds between 40 and 74mph, with some hurricane force gusts) across the entire Atlantic coast of Florida, resulting in widespread power outages and some surge flooding – even in Jacksonville, which was impressive. Several tornadoes were also spawned in the right-front quadrant of the storm across eastern Florida, including one which caused considerable damage in Palm Bay. And the weaker but large wind field brought a lot of trees down in Georgia (different vegetative landscape than Florida), resulting in widespread power outages and some fatalities.
Had the storm turned northward sooner, avoiding Cuba and raking the East Coast, or spent more time over the Gulf of Mexico (passing over or just west of Tampa Bay, for example), the impacts could have been much worse. Still, the storm likely caused billions of dollars worth of damage.