Tampa Residents Warned to Expect Worst Hurricane in Their Lifetime

The Tampa Bay area has been brushed by many hurricanes in the last few decades, but more than a century has passed since the area, halfway down the length of Florida on the state’s Gulf Coast, has sustained a direct hit from a major hurricane.That has given many local residents a false sense of safety, a longstanding expectation that they will be spared, according to experts.“People have some superstitions about, ‘Oh, we haven’t been hit,’ but that’s absolutely false,” said Rick Davis, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Tampa.“We’ve definitely been hit with major hurricanes.

Just not in anyone’s current lifetime.”The metropolitan area around Tampa Bay includes the cities of Tampa, St.Petersburg and Clearwater, and is now home to about three million people.In October 1921, when the population was only about 120,000, the Tampa Bay area was devastated by a Category 3 storm that shredded fishing piers and smashed steamships into docks.

The storm submerged railroad cars and leveled trees and utility poles.Eight people died in the storm, nearly half drowned by the storm surge that inundated the shoreline.Mr.

Davis said Tampa Bay was hit by three major storms in the 1800s, including a hurricane known as the Great Gale of 1848.That one destroyed nearly all the buildings in the area, which was then little more than a settlement of several hundred people near a military outpost, Fort Brooke.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

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