By Tuesday morning, the message on overhead traffic warning signed around the Jersey Shore had changed from "SEVERE COASTAL STORM, BE PREPARED" to "SCHOOL IS OPEN, DRIVE CAREFULLY."

So, Tropical Storm Hermine jave Hurricane Joaquin and a collection of nor'easters and blizzards that swerved or fizzled. This story is about the number of bullets dodged since Hurricane Sandy battered the coast, brought the forests down on our power lines and sent the ocean, bays and rivers surging into neighborhoods with unprecedented force.

Four years and still no dunes on the northern barrier island from Point Pleasant to Seaside Heights, where Sandy left its most visible, wide-scale destruction, other than Union Beach on the Raritan Bay.

The Lincoln Tunnel was built in three years. Most of the Pulaski Skyway was done in two. The Turnpike was cobbled together in four.

And still, there are no mounds of sand covered by dune grasses and shrubs along a vulnerable 12-mile stretch of the Jersey Shore.

By Prakriti Neogi