HOUSTON — The shape and position of Tampa Bay makes it one of the most dangerous places in the U.S. for storm surge. If the dirty side of a strong hurricane hits the bay entrance just right, it would lead to catastrophic surge flooding.
The shape of the bay is like a catcher's mitt for a storm moving west to east like Hurricane Milton, so the people of Tampa have been rightly nervous the past few days as the storm approached.
But this time, Tampa Bay got really lucky. The storm made landfall around 8:30 p.m. local time, just to the south of the Bay. That put the dirty side of the storm, the side with a surge potential of 10'-15' + south of the bay. In fact, this placed the Bay in the weak 'offshore flow' side of the circulation, meaning that the winds were blowing from east to west in an offshore direction.
This, in fact, caused the water level in Tampa Bay to drop by about 3' between 6 p.m. and 11 p.m. We saw the same thing happen back int 2017 when powerful Hurricane 'Irma' moved from south to north up the Gulf coast of Florida.
