Tampa is the single most vulnerable city in the US for hurricane storm surges — thanks to a mix of fatal factors colliding to create catastrophic conditions should it take a direct hit from a major storm like the incoming Hurricane Milton, according to experts.
About 50% of the more than 3 million people living around Tampa Bay reside at elevations less than 10 feet above sea level, a 2015 study from the disaster consultants Karen Clark and Co. found — meaning millions of homes will be severely flooded if Milton’s 15-foot storm surge comes to fruition.
Tampa Bay was last hit by a major hurricane in 1921, when just a few hundred people lived in sparsely developed backwater towns — and the community was still devastated. Ocean waves broke in the middle of downtown Tampa, and swaths of infrastructure were washed away.
The area is practically tailor-made to create severe storm surges due to shallow depths in the bay and surrounding Gulf Coast. Waves blown by heavy wind can “pile up” and create a deadly wall of water, MIT meteorology professor Kerry Emanuel told The Post.
“Storm surges are physically the same thing as a tsunami, but they’re created by wind rather than a shaking sea floor,” he explained.
“Imagine a wave coming up to a place where the water’s getting shallower and shallower and shallower. It has to slow down,” Emanuel added.
“The front of it is slowing down faster than the back of it. So it’s like a traffic jam. One car starts to slow down and then the other cars pile up behind it. It’s a fluid equivalent of that.”
The shape of Tampa Bay itself also exacerbates that effect, Emanuel explained, as its narrow opening and channel further amplifies the surge’s pile-up and spreads it across the surrounding region.
“The water is piling up left and right, it’s not just piling up from the bottom. You have to squeeze all that energy into progressively smaller places, and it literally just gets funneled,” he said.
Finally, if Milton lands just north of Tampa, its counterclockwise rotation will slam wind and waves directly into the bay — just one more factor which led Emanuel to agree with Karen Clark and Co.’s assessment that Tampa faces surge dangers unlike any other US city.
The area has become one of Florida’s most bustling regions since it was last hit by a hurricane — leading experts to fear residents may not be aware of what could be coming and choose to ignore evacuation orders.
“Unfortunately, there will be probably a higher proportion of people who refuse to leave when they ask to evacuate,” Emanuel said.
Milton strengthened to a Category 5 storm again Tuesday after a brief lull Monday night. Sustained winds are blowing at 165 mph.
Tampa could still be spared the worst of the storm as some trajectory predictions suggest it could make landfall south of the bay — with differences of just 10 to 20 miles seriously lessening the impacts created by Tampa’s topography.
Still, other predictions place the storm landing north of Tampa, or right in the heart of the bay.
Forecasters, however, have cautioned it is still far too early to know concretely where the storm will strike, and that its landfall won’t be known until Wednesday morning or early afternoon.
With Post wires
