For more than For a century, Tampa Bay has avoided Florida’s most destructive hurricanes. Now Hurricane Milton may end that lucky streak, as the storm is expected to arrive touch down just south of Tampa Bay in the early hours of Thursday morning. The low-lying coast, still covered in debris from last month’s Hurricane Helene, is bracing for a storm surge of up to 15 feet.
Tampa Bay’s shallow seabed and built-up coastline make it particularly vulnerable to hurricanes. TO 2015 report from disaster modelers Karen Clarke & Co classified the Tampa-St. The St. Petersburg area is the most vulnerable city to storm surge flooding in the United States. Despite multiple reports echoing the area’s vulnerability to storm surge, plans to bolster the area’s defenses have been delayed and, in some cases, vetoed by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis. Now the area will have to face the most dangerous storm in a century with what in many cases are aging storm defenses.
Tampa Bay’s geography makes it particularly ill-equipped to deal with a storm like Hurricane Milton. The shallow coastal shelf and narrow mouth of the bay could combine with hurricane-force winds to send large amounts of water onto a densely urbanized coast where half the population lives less than 10 feet above sea level. As the city flourished during the 20th century, new developments They accumulated along the coast, placing residents near possible storm surges.
Karen Clarke & Co estimated that damage caused by a hurricane every 100 years in Tampa Bay could total $175 billion, more than almost any other hurricane in US history. TO analysis 2019 of the area’s transportation network found that most of Tampa Bay’s highway system, including an elevated causeway and two bridges that span the bay, are extremely vulnerable to extreme weather. The report called for improving drainage, raising roads and protecting coastlines.
Despite these vulnerabilities, some projects to defend Tampa Bay against storm surge have been slow to implement. Flooding following Hurricane Idalia in 2023 revealed that stormwater pipes were unmaintained, blocked by debris and not equipped to effectively expel flood waters, according to a report published in the Tampa Bay Times. In August, the Clearwater City Council voted to increase stormwater utility fees to pay for drainage system improvements.
But DeSantis has vetoed other flood defense projects. A project that would replace 30-year stormwater infrastructure in the city of Dunedin in Pinellas County, which is located between the city of Tampa and the Gulf of Mexico, was banned for the 2024-25 fiscal year. Other Pinellas County flood defense projects vetoed by DeSantis include plans to install power backups in sewer pumps, buy emergency generators for fire stations, redirect stormwaterand defend a theater of the flood water.
Projects vetoed in Hillsborough Country, on Pinellas Bay, include a plan to make a wastewater treatment facility more resilient to severe weather events and a project to install 3,500 feet of mangroves and oyster reefs that could help reduce the height and strength of storm surges.
