It’s a typical later season spot for storms to brew up. The wild card this year was a lot of sahara dust kept the tropics quiet for most of the season.
We are even though we are right on the Cumberland. We had close to biblical flooding this past spring and it wasn't even close. Although it was the first time we ever saw our road have a spot where the water rushed over it where all the runoff water goes down into the river. I have a picture somewhere.
after experiencing so many go over our house in SW Fl, I can say that after a few, the area gets hardened, the trees get wind pruned,and the process of dealign with it gets smoother. By the time Ian got here, it wasn't much more than an inconvenience and a few lost shingles for us but we are at elevation 18 so flooding and surge didn't impact us even though I am less than 2 miles from the bay as the crow flies. Those trees have been prepped already by previous storms and all the weakness removed. Only thing that can change is if the ground is saturated before the winds get there and then trees can be lost that may have stood before. Never a good place to come ashore but that area is probably best from total damage possible. Just hope it doesn't hook into Tampa just north of the bay
Your counterclockwise bay is going to get hammered eventually. I live on the west side of Escambia Bay and Ivan in '04 hit "just right" to pack the counterclockwise bay with water. When it shifted and released the surge, everyone on my side of the bay was hit with a sudden tsunami. A bouy off the shore (Lora Point) registered a 60-foot wave before it broke. My neighborhood was utterly flattened as the piled up water rushed back out, as was the interstate bridge a quarter mile up the shore. Tampa Bay's counterclockwise curl is even worse, we can only hope they build a spillway before the unthinkable happens.
I live east of Lovers Key in SW Fla. Doubt our area will ever see anything worse than Ian. I have Bonita Beach, Lovers Key, and Ft Myers beach barrier islands that absorb the surge. We had no flooding from Ian. Agree that Tampa Bay shape works against it as the water hose nowhere to go but even there elevations over 18 - 20 NAVD should be okay as the surge will exit over St Pete Beach before it gets that high.
They've been dreading "the unthinkable" /Tampa Bay since before I was a kid. Kinda like New Orleans for decades before Katrina. "...one of these days Alice...one of these days....POW! Right in the kisser!"
This is just what Cedar Key needs. Third storm in the last year and .... there was a significant fire on the Big Dock just a few days ago. Hope the debris is cleared before this storm hits.
It’s my counterclockwise bay, and I live almost right on it. Indeed, every one of these types of storms threaten it.
Thank you for that information. Between driving on the interstate and touring UWF with my son a few years ago I’ve often thought that by the landscape of that bay that things could get real ugly under the right circumstances.
Keaton Beach and Fish Creek are between the two, and Perry isn’t too far inland, but other than that it’s mostly Wildlife Management Areas directly on the coast in that area.
If you had to pick a section of the Florida coast for a hurricane to hit that is the least populated and has the least amount of property that may get destroyed, that big bend area is it. Sucks for those that are there, but that same storm hitting pcola, tampa, miami, jax etc would cause a lot more damage and loss of life.
Sitting on St George right now.....think it will miss east of here. Gulf was a millpond yesterday, kicking up today
