Local Hazard History
Tampa Bay's geography — a shallow, north-pointing bay backed by dense low-lying neighborhoods — makes the region one of the most storm-surge-vulnerable metros in the United States. The 1921 Tampa Bay Hurricane remains the last major hurricane to make direct landfall on the bay. The decades since were a long run of near-misses: Hurricane Irma (2017) was forecast to track up Tampa Bay before veering inland, and Hurricane Ian (2022) sat in the Tampa cone for days before turning south to devastate Fort Myers. That luck ran thin in 2024. Hurricane Helene (September 2024) made landfall hundreds of miles north but pushed record storm surge into Pinellas County and coastal Tampa Bay. Just weeks later, Hurricane Milton (October 2024) became the most serious direct threat to Tampa Bay in over a century — making Category 3 landfall at Siesta Key, just south of the bay, and bringing widespread wind damage, tornado outbreaks, and multi-day power outages across the metro.