The 1921 Tampa Bay Hurricane

On October 25, 1921, a hurricane made landfall near Tarpon Springs and drove a damaging storm surge into Tampa Bay and downtown Tampa.

The National Weather Service Tampa Bay office calls it the most destructive hurricane to hit the area since 1848. A storm surge of up to 11 feet damaged and destroyed a significant amount of the structures along coastal locations from Pasco County south through southwest Florida, and the highest surge inundated areas in downtown Tampa and Tarpon Springs. Winds were estimated at 120 mph near the landfall point in Tarpon Springs.

Inside Tampa the wind was weaker than the water. The NWS records that the Tampa Weather Office at the time reported a peak wind of 75 mph with the storm. Its storm statistics, shown below, list a peak of 140 mph while the hurricane was a Category 4, landfall winds of 120 mph, a Category 3, and a maximum Tampa Bay storm surge of about 10.5 feet.

Forecasters in 1921 had no satellites, radar or computer models, so a forecast for the Tampa Bay storm depended entirely on sparse marine and land observations.

The NWS explains that most hurricane forecasts of that era were based on climatological data from previous hurricanes. That record suggested that, in general, cyclones moving over the Gulf had a tendency to pass well north of Tampa. The 1921 storm instead turned in near Tarpon Springs and pushed its surge into Tampa Bay.

The NWS has preserved the weather maps forecasters used that week. Its 1921 hurricane page republishes the original surface charts for each day from October 21 through October 26, 1921, alongside an interactive track and photographs from Tampa, St. Petersburg, Palmetto, Cortez and Pass-a-Grille.

The NWS lists a maximum Tampa Bay storm surge of about 10.5 feet in 1921, and Hillsborough County gives 10 to 12 feet along Bayshore Boulevard.

The two official figures measure slightly different things: the NWS storm statistics give a bay-wide maximum of about 10.5 feet and an area-wide surge of up to 11 feet, while the Hillsborough County Bayshore history states that a storm surge of 10 to 12 feet flooded Bayshore Boulevard and many houses in the Hyde Park neighborhood. Both agree that the highest water reached downtown Tampa.

The NWS states that waves from the Bay were almost breaking in the streets of Ybor City, and that water made its way into homes and businesses from Hyde Park, to Downtown Tampa, and into the fringes of Ybor City. A photograph it republishes of Parker Street carries the caption that city streets in Tampa became only navigable by boat. The USF Libraries Burgert Brothers collection holds a photograph dated October 25, 1921, of the flooded intersection of Parker and Eagle streets after the hurricane, with three men canoeing down the street past houses.

The port took a direct blow. The NWS reports that many vessels, like the steamer Favorite and the Thomas B. Garland, were smashed against the docks by the waves, that other ships broke their moorings and smashed into docks and seawalls or sank, and that some vessels moved inland with the surge and became beached as the water receded. Its photograph of the Ybor Channel notes that vessels moored in port carrying goods and cargo were not spared.

The 1921 hurricane destroyed homes, brick road, trolley tracks and seawalls along Hillsborough Bay, and Bayshore Boulevard's seawall was repaired and partly rebuilt afterward.

In its seawall history, Hillsborough County records that developers Alfred Swann and Eugene Holtsinger began the original 1-mile section of seawall, roadway and electric streetlights between Swann Avenue and Rome Avenue in 1907, and that the county added 2.3 more miles of seawall and roadway in 1912. The county states that the 1921 hurricane made landfall near Tarpon Springs as a Category 3 storm on October 25 and destroyed homes, brick road, trolley tracks and the seawalls along Hillsborough Bay.

The NWS photo record describes Tampa's Bayshore Boulevard as near the location of some of the highest recorded surge, says the water completely destroyed sections of the seawall that would normally protect the road and homes, and notes that the surge was far higher than the seawall and road and continued well inland in some spots. A Burgert Brothers photograph catalogued by USF Libraries shows onlookers beside a trolley car on tracks damaged by the hurricane of 1921 on Bayshore Boulevard.

The rebuilding gave Bayshore its present shape. Hillsborough County states that, due to damage from the 1921 hurricane, the seawall was repaired and in some areas completely rebuilt, and that in 1926 the county honored the completion of the southern end of the seawall with a historical marker. The same county timeline dates the seawall and balustrade from Howard Avenue to Gandy Boulevard to 1926, five years after the surge.

The 1921 storm cut electricity in Tampa, downed trees and power poles, damaged citrus fields and caused eight confirmed fatalities across the region, according to the NWS.

The NWS photo record notes that Tampa's transportation infrastructure was completely crippled, that roads and shoreline tracks were washed out, and that the electricity powering the city was cut. Roads were made impassable by fallen power poles and trees, windows were blown out and roofs badly damaged, and large trees were ripped out of the ground, including some in front of the Tampa Bay Hotel. In Ybor City, strong winds toppled power lines, and in the most urban areas the gaps between buildings acted like a wind tunnel, accelerating the winds.

Losses reached farms as well as the waterfront. The NWS reports that agriculture, and the citrus industry in particular, was hard hit, as winds destroyed entire crop fields and the surge caused salt water intrusion into the soils that prevented some crops from returning in future seasons. There were eight confirmed fatalities, nearly half due to drowning as the surge inundated near shore locations around Tampa Bay, and others from hazards of fallen debris such as live wires.

Hillsborough County describes the 1921 storm as the last major hurricane to make landfall in the Tampa Bay area.

That statement appears in the county Bayshore seawall timeline, directly after its account of the 1921 surge on Bayshore Boulevard and Hyde Park. Other storms have still affected the Tampa region since then. The NWS Tampa Bay weather history pages list benchmark hurricanes for the area on September 24, 1848, September 26, 1896, October 9, 1910, October 25, 1921, September 11, 1926, August 29, 1935, September 1, 1950, August 30, 1960, September 11, 2001, September 3, 2003, August 9, 2004, August 24, 2004, September 13, 2004 and October 15, 2005.

The NWS Tampa Bay office studies the 1921 hurricane through archived Weather Bureau records and a modern computer simulation of the storm.

The NWS Preserve America pages explain that the Tampa Bay office, working with the University of South Florida, scanned and rebound two frail leather-bound U.S. Weather Service Bureau books dating back to 1890, and teamed them with old weather maps, news articles, photographs and event summaries.

Forecasters have also rerun the storm. Ahead of the 100th anniversary, the National Weather Service in Ruskin simulated the hurricane with the Weather Research and Forecasting model, initialized at 12 km resolution from the NOAA-CIRES-DOE Twentieth Century Reanalysis beginning at 1200 UTC on October 21, 1921, for a 120-hour forecast. The NWS reports that the simulated storm moved along a generally similar path out of the northwest Caribbean Sea and made landfall on the correct date at the correct location, near Tarpon Springs, and that it reproduced the cyclone's large size and the rain that soaked much of the Florida peninsula up to 24 hours ahead of the main impacts on Tampa Bay. The NWS page describes the reanalysis as spanning 1836 to 2015; NOAA Physical Sciences Laboratory says its latest version covers 1836 to 2015 with an experimental extension back to 1806.

Last verified: October 18, 2026, against the NWS Tampa Bay 1921 hurricane page and Preserve America history page, the Hillsborough County Bayshore seawall timeline, two USF Libraries Burgert Brothers photograph records and the NOAA Twentieth Century Reanalysis page.