| That's really good. I didn't even know about several of those. We do get hit by a lot of tropical storms, but we do generally do better when it comes to hurricanes. Of course having two fresh makes it not seem that way, but statistically it's nice that we get less overall. I kind of only know about the 1921 storm as that is kind of the benchmark for surge and remains so even after Helene I think, though now people remember Helene here. I was looking at some of the surge values to try and figure out by how much 1921 was still higher, but there's always so many surge and water level reporting methods. It's always confusing to figure all that out. But it seems like the 1921 storm would have been higher everywhere around Tampa Bay. 1921: https://www.weather.gov/tbw/tampabay1921hurricane For 1921: "A storm surge of up to 11 feet damaged and destroyed a significant amount of the structures along coastal locations from Pasco county south through southwest Florida." SLOSH model run images of the 1921 storm: https://www.weather.gov/tbw/hurricane1921 Helene final report: https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/data/tcr/AL092024_Helene.pdf "Within Tampa Bay, maximum storm surge inundation of 5 to 7 ft AGL occurred. The NOS tide gauge at East Bay measured 7.2 ft above MHHW. Elsewhere, NOS tide gauges measured water levels relative to MHHW of 6.83 ft at Old Port Tampa, 6.31 ft at St. Petersburg, and 6.04 ft at Port Manatee. The St. Petersburg tide station has the longest record in Tampa Bay, dating back to 1947. The maximum water level of 6.31 ft above MHHW during Helene surpassed the previous record of 3.97 ft during Hurricane Elena (1985)11. Additionally, 4 to 6 ft AGL occurred from Venice to south of Englewood where a deployed USGS water level sensor measured 5.71 ft above MHHW near the Venice Fishing Pier." (it was higher north of course, but just posting the Tampa Bay section) From a footnote on Helene's report: "Several terms are used to describe water levels due to a storm. Storm surge is defined as the abnormal rise of water generated by a storm, over and above the predicted astronomical tide, and is expressed in terms of height above normal tide levels. Because storm surge represents the deviation from normal water levels, it is not referenced to a vertical datum. Storm tide is defined as the water level due to the combination of storm surge and the astronomical tide, and is expressed in terms of height above a vertical datum, i.e. the North American Vertical Datum of 1988 (NAVD88) or Mean Lower Low Water (MLLW). Inundation is the total water level that occurs on normally dry ground as a result of the storm tide, and is expressed in terms of height above ground level. At the coast, normally dry land is roughly defined as areas higher than the normal high tide line, or Mean Higher High Water (MHHW)." |