Hurricanes have affected Tampa Bay differently, depending on if they track just west or east of a body of water.
When Hurricane Helene made landfall at 11:10 p.m. on Sept. 26 near Perry, Florida, as a Category 4, it became the strongest storm to ever hit the Big Bend.
It was also the third Big Bend landfall of the last two hurricane seasons, after Debby in 2024 and Idalia in 2023.
This comes six years after the Panhandle’s worst storm on record, Hurricane Michael.
But these historic Big Bend landfalls are only part of the story.
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There is also what hurricanes can do to Tampa Bay depending on if they track just west or east of a body of water.
Hurricanes, like all areas of low pressure, have a huge counter-clockwise rotation. That means the weather on the right side of forward motion is completely different from the left.
In the case of Irma in 2017 and Ian in 2022, the storm stayed east of Tampa. That means Tampa was never on the storm’s right, active or "dirty" side. And it also means the counter-clockwise winds around Irma and Ian pushed the water out of Tampa Bay.
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These two events produced some of the lowest water levels ever seen for the Bay.
But Helene was different, because it tracked to Tampa’s west, which means Tampa was on the right, active or "dirty" side.
In this case, the counter-clockwise winds pushed the water into Tampa Bay like we have never seen before.
And that led to a surge that was officially the worst ever in the history of record-keeping in Tampa.
