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Where did Helene hurt Tampa Bay the worst?

Where did Helene hurt Tampa Bay the worst?

Vaseline 2 months ago

The sand piled along Gulf Boulevard looked like snowdrifts. Boats were towed ashore to downtown Gulfport. And the water flooded the streets of the Davis Islands even after the sun rose and waves elsewhere in Tampa Bay had receded.

Emergency managers, sheriffs and meteorologists shared the same message Friday: Hurricane Helene delivered what forecasters promised.

Helene was correctly predicted to become one of the largest Gulf hurricanes in decades. As it passed about 100 miles (160 kilometers) past Tampa on Thursday evening as a massive Category 4 storm, it unleashed a life-threatening surge that forecasters had warned about. Helene killed at least five people in Pinellas County, officials said.

The National Weather Service’s Tampa Bay office said Pinellas’ barrier islands and the beach resorts surrounding them were undoubtedly the hardest hit by Helene.

Preliminary data shows the storm surge there reached 8 feet, mirroring forecasters’ predictions days before Helene’s landfall in the Big Bend region of the state.

“It had a major impact on a lot of communities, especially those in Pinellas County,” said Ali Davis, a meteorologist with the weather service’s Ruskin office. “For many people, especially coastal communities, it was quite a scene to wake up to this morning.”

In Clearwater Beach, tide gauges measured peak values ​​at almost 2 meters depth.

According to Clearwater police and fire spokesman Rob Shaw, first responders there overnight rescued more than a half-dozen people who called 911 for help when their homes were inundated by flooding from Hurricane Helene.

Hurricane Helene's storm surge has cut away sand dunes along Clearwater Beach.
Hurricane Helene’s storm surge has cut away sand dunes along Clearwater Beach. (Courtesy of Kathy Griffin)

Also right on schedule was Helene’s rapid intensification, which occurs when a hurricane’s central pressure drops by 24 millibars (a unit that measures air pressure) within 24 hours.

The storm’s pressure dropped by at least 30 millibars over the course of the day, leading to landfall, Davis said.

While local meteorologists weren’t ready to call Helene the worst storm in history to hit Tampa Bay, they acknowledged that the most recent storms had broken records.

The Cat 4 was “definitely one of the worst storms we’ve seen in the Tampa Bay area,” Davis said.

For the police, the extent of Helene’s damage was not even a question.

“We’ve never seen anything like this in Pinellas County,” said Pinellas Sheriff Bob Gualtieri.

The county received more than 7,000 hurricane-related 911 calls. Gualtieri said callers last night told dispatchers they were hiding in attics to escape rising water. Some were people in wheelchairs with water up to chest height, he added.

County officials counted more than 500 water rescues by first responders and said more than 1,600 people remained in public shelters.

Property damage was still being counted Friday, officials said. At least 37,000 structures were flooded in Pinellas, a county spokesman said.

As of Friday morning, the beaches still looked “like a war zone,” the sheriff said at a news conference. He urged residents to stay off the roads, which were still littered with sand, pieces of metal and loose propane tanks.

More than 40% of Duke Energy customers across the province were without power, according to county spokesperson Barbra Hernandez.

Disaster teams monitored the county, working to clear roads, inspecting bridges and removing debris, said Cathie Perkins, Pinellas County emergency manager.

“It will take a while for Pinellas County to look like it did three days ago,” she said.

In other parts of Tampa Bay, preliminary estimates of the surge show similar devastation.

While Tampa General Hospital was spared damage, thanks to flood barriers that officials hastily installed during the approach to Helene, the Davis Islands appeared underwater long after the tides receded Friday. It left “extensive damage,” according to Tampa Mayor Jane Castor.

In areas the weather service says may be underrepresented, such as East Bay from Port Manatee through Ruskin and the US 41 corridor near Apollo Beach and Gibson, reports of high flooding trickled into their office Friday morning.

Meteorologists also breathed a sigh of relief after Helene. Tampa Bay had dodged another direct hit from a powerful storm.

Davis said she saw one silver lining from Helene: It showed Tampa Bay firsthand how seriously the threat of a powerful hurricane should be taken.

“Hopefully people can build on this experience and take the right action – heed evacuation orders – and come up with a hurricane plan in the worst-case scenario,” she said. “And be better prepared for next time.”

Times staffers Jack Evans and Tracey McManus contributed to this report.

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