4 days ago
Year of the surge: How a storm 100 miles away changed Tampa Bay forever
TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — In 2024, Tampa Bay witnessed something that hadn't happened in generations—a historic storm surge, not from a direct hurricane strike, but from a storm that stayed nearly 100 miles offshore.
Hurricane Helene never made landfall, but it didn't have to.
On Davis Islands, longtime resident Jeannie Trudeau Tate remembers the moment she realized something was different.
'I've lived on Davis Island since 1983, and we have never had a drop of water in the house.'
But on that day, water began creeping up over the seawall, spilling into their pool, and slamming against their sliding glass doors.
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'The water was up four feet on the sliding glass doors,' she said. 'I was joking, I should do a commercial for the door company—because somehow, not a drop came through.'
Until it did.
It wasn't the windows or the doors that gave way—it was the pet door.
'We first foolishly thought we could keep up with it,' Jeannie said. 'We tried the wet vac, buckets … but within 30 minutes, we knew it was a losing battle.'
With floodwaters rising and power flickering, Jeannie and her husband made a split-second decision: escape now, or risk being trapped.
'We tried the front door, but the water was four feet high. We went to the window—water was right there. My husband flung the front door open, we stayed to the side, grabbed the dog, and waded waist-deep through the bushes to a neighbor's house. It was about 12:30 in the morning.'
Helene claimed twelve lives in the Tampa Bay area—all due to storm surge. Many were caught off guard, thinking a storm that far offshore couldn't pose a threat.
But just weeks later, Hurricane Milton approached on a track that threatened a direct hit. This time, people listened.
'I'm absolutely convinced people reacted differently because of Helene,' Jeannie said. 'My husband and I—prime example—we evacuated for Milton. It was a ghost town.'
Thanks to the memory of Helene's surge, Milton claimed no surge-related deaths. The storm that didn't make landfall here ended up saving lives, because experience became the teacher.
The National Hurricane Center continues to urge coastal communities to take storm surge seriously, even when a hurricane is well offshore. Water, not wind, is often the deadliest threat.
And in the year of the surge, Tampa Bay learned that firsthand.
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