"There's no reason to go into panic mode," said Dennis Feltgen, head of communications at the U.S. National Hurricane Center in Miami. "It's way to early to know where those two things are headed."

Now that Hurricane Irma is dead, the post-mortem has begun. How bad was the storm? How much worse could it have been? And how accurate was the forecast? The answers might surprise you.

Had Irma tracked 50 miles further north along Cuba's coast, the results could have been dramatically different, meteorologists say, causing devastation to the densely populated Greater Miami region. Also by tracking up Florida's west coast close to the shoreline deprived Irma of the warm Gulf water that fuels storms. Here is a compilation of the hurricane satellite images shared by NASA on social media.

The Keys reopened to its 79,000 residents, highways strewn with seaweed, coconuts, debris and appliances were and bridges declared safe, but there is no power or cell phone service.

Canceled flights, roads closed: many Florida residents are stranded after fleeing Hurricane Irma.

Irma left a path of destruction behind with wind damage and flooding across a wide swath of the state, including the Florida Keys and Miami. It continued to move up the west coast but its winds dropped to 70 mph, just below hurricane status.