Flood — Hillsborough, Florida

2015-08-01 · near Old Port Tampa Ports Site, Hillsborough, Florida

Event narrative

Multiple days of heavy rain caused widespread road closures across the Tampa area. Dozens of roads were flooded including the major thoroughfares of Armenia Avenue, Dale Mabry Highway, Gandy Boulevard, Westshore Boulevard, Veteran's Expressway, US 41, and State Road 60. The flooding resulted in 117 road cave-ins across Tampa, 99 homes and 66 business were impacted by the flooding in the City. 9 City of Tampa vehicles were damaged in the flooding. Additionally, a large tree was uprooted due to the saturated ground and fell on a car just west of Bayshore Boulevard on South Gandy Boulevard.

Further north across parts of Temple Terrace, including the University of South Florida, there was additional damage from flooding. The university sustained $137K in damages while 101 homes in the Temple Terrace were impacted. 88 homes sustained major damage as did 7 mobile homes.

Wider weather episode

A weak area of low pressure developed along a stationary frontal boundary across north Florida. This allowed for waves of showers and thunderstorms to move across the area for a few days causing flooding throughout much of the Tampa Bay area. The heaviest rain fall on the morning of the 3rd with some portions of Hillsborough, Pinellas and Pasco Counties receiving 6 to 8 of rain. This event was exacerbated from the flooding and saturated soils from multiple heavy rain events that occurred on August 1 and again during the last week of July.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (27.8501, -82.5506)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 588073. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.