SUNSET BEACH, N.C. - Tropical Storm Ernesto was pretty ho-hum for permanent residents of Brunswick County.

Wind gusts, if you caught the right one, up to 70 mph. Some trees down. A few roads flooded. Maybe the lights off for a while.

Dismissible, in a word.

"A good blow," said Ocean Isle Beach Mayor Debbie Smith, a 51-year Brunswick County resident.

But for visitors, the story was different.

"I'm really proud," said Cheryl Coyle of Akron, Ohio, who braved the night on Sunset Beach in a cottage she and her husband have owned for six years.

Although it was her first tropical storm, Coyle is from tornado country and went through the one that appeared along the oceanfront at Myrtle Beach several years ago.

Now that was scary, she said.

Coyle was apprehensive about staying on an island with no possible escape to the mainland once the bridge shuts down for the storm. She cleared out a closet in the middle of the house and retreated to it with her toy poodle Chloe when a tornado warning was issued for Sunset Beach.

Now she's a storm veteran, like Crystal and Anthony Wilcox of New Jersey, who were vacationing at a friend's house on Oak Island and didn't realize until Friday morning that the eye made landfall there.

Crystal Wilcox - who grew up in Fayetteville, N.C., but never experienced a storm on the coast before - said she wasn't really scared during Ernesto. She went to the beach about 7:30 p.m. Thursday and decided pretty quickly that she wouldn't want to be out in the big ocean swells she saw.

But all in all, the experience was exciting.

For Brunswick's emergency personnel, it was more a matter of a smooth routine they've mastered over the past several years.

Through an interactive emergency management Web site, telephone calls, communication among those at the county's Emergency Operations Center and periodic phone conferences, they dealt with 8 to 12 inches of rainfall, 38 flooded roads, thousands of power outages, school and community college closures, state of emergency declarations and voluntary evacuation calls as though they were a social gathering.

Sustained winds of 60 mph?

How 'bout some coffee?

You never know about tropical storms, said Randy Thompson, Brunswick's director of emergency services. While all may seem calm, each person is constantly evaluating the most recent information and thinking about decisions that might have to be made.

Like when to close schools.

Wednesday night, it looked as though Ernesto would blow by to the west and not disturb anyone's day-to-day. By Thursday morning, the predicted landfall had shifted from Charleston to the state line and rain squalls descended a lot sooner than anyone expected.

The new picture led Brunswick schools Superintendent Katie McGee to close schools early that day. Later, with the news that landfall might be between Ocean Isle and Holden Beach, she delayed Friday's opening by two hours.

Still later, when she learned that roads primarily in the Leland area would likely be underwater at least part of Friday, she cancelled those classes, as well.

McGee knew that whatever call she made would be scrutinized by people accustomed to hurricanes and wanted to be sure each was justified.

The questions Brunswick's visitors faced were far more personal. Should they stay? Should they leave?

Would they be safe?

At one point, said Lois D'Agostino of Alexandria, Va., she wondered whether she had made the right call to stay in a condominium at Sea Trail for her first-ever tropical storm. The screens on the porch were rattling. The windows were shaking.

But, she figured, the odds were with her. Why should her condominium among all at Sea Trail be chosen for annihilation?

Now she's a veteran, too.

"Yeah," she said, lounging on Sunset Beach with a book Friday morning, "I think I could handle another one."

And although locals might seem nonchalant about storms to nonlocals, they aren't cavalier.

Mayor Smith, for instance, remembers the roof peeling off her family's Ocean Isle motel during a hurricane in the late '60s. Others may have friends or relatives who clung to island trees while Category 5 Hurricane Hazel scoured the land from beneath them in 1954.

From such experiences come limits, which for many locals are the same as those of nonveterans: mandatory evacuation orders.

"You don't ever know," Smith said, "when a roof will blow."