Heavy Rain — Pinellas, Florida

2015-07-29 · near Pinellas Park, Pinellas, Florida

Event narrative

Pinellas County Emergency Management relayed a report from the Medical Examiner of a 58 year old homeless man who was found face down submerged in a drainage area that was filled with storm water on July 29th. The man was resuscitated and taken to a hospital where he eventually expired on August 4th. The Medical Examiner ruled that the cause of death was complications of drowning, with contributing conditions of arteriosclerotic cardiovascular disease and chronic ethanolism.

Wider weather episode

An area of low pressure developed along a weak frontal boundary over the eastern Gulf of Mexico late in the week and stretched across the northern Florida Peninsula during the weekend. In combination with anomalously high atmospheric moisture and onshore flow, this low helped produce numerous showers and thunderstorms that caused very high rainfall rates and slow moving storms. In some cases, areas received several rounds of heavy rainfall over the course of a few days. This resulted in some areas receiving as over 11 inches of rain between the 24th and 27th, with both areal flooding and river flooding reported. One fatality occurred with the residual flooding in Pinellas County on the 29th.

View location on OpenStreetMap → (27.8389, -82.7018)

Source: NOAA Storm Events Database, event_id 590306. Narrative written by the NWS forecast office that issued the report.