Hurricane Irma in Tampa (2017)

Hurricane Irma passed inland east of Tampa overnight on September 10 to 11, 2017, after making its final landfall near Marco Island.

The National Hurricane Center tropical cyclone report on Irma states that Irma made its final landfall near Marco Island, Florida, at 1930 UTC on September 10 (3:30 p.m. EDT), with estimated maximum winds of 100 kt and a minimum pressure of 936 mb, after weakening to a Category 3 hurricane. Once inland it weakened quickly, tracked just east of Naples and Fort Myers, and passed between Tampa and Orlando by 0600 UTC on September 11 as a Category 1 storm.

The closest pass to Hillsborough County came in the early hours of Monday, September 11. The NHC report says the center passed near Plant City at 0509 UTC (1:09 a.m. EDT), where a spotter reported a minimum pressure of 964.4 mb. Because the center stayed inland and east of Tampa Bay, the winds over the bay initially blew offshore, which is why Tampa remembers Irma for water that left rather than water that arrived.

For Tampa, the event comes down to four records: the official warnings that put Tampa Bay under a Storm Surge Warning, the drained bay, the Tampa Electric outages counted by the Florida Public Service Commission, and the City of Tampa's debris total.

Tampa Bay was under a National Hurricane Center Storm Surge Warning from the night of September 8 until the afternoon of September 11, 2017.

Advisory 40, issued at 11 p.m. EDT on Friday, September 8, as Irma made landfall on the Camaguey Archipelago of Cuba as a Category 5 hurricane, extended the Storm Surge Warning on the west coast of Florida to the Anclote River, including Tampa Bay, and forecast 3 to 5 feet of water above ground from the Anclote River to Venice, including Tampa Bay. By 11 a.m. EDT on Sunday, September 10, advisory 46 had raised the Tampa Bay figure to 5 to 8 feet from Anna Maria Island to Clearwater Beach, if the peak surge came at high tide.

As the center moved inland the forecast came down. Advisory 48, at 11 p.m. EDT on September 10, placed Irma about 50 miles southeast of Tampa with maximum sustained winds of 100 mph and cut the Tampa Bay surge forecast to 2 to 4 feet. Advisory 49, at 5 a.m. EDT on Monday, September 11, located the center about 60 miles north of Tampa with winds of 75 mph. Advisory 51, at 5 p.m. EDT that day, with Irma over southwestern Georgia, discontinued the Storm Surge Warning from Clearwater Beach southward, including Tampa Bay.

Tampa Bay drained because offshore winds on the northern side of Irma's circulation pushed the water out toward the Gulf before the storm passed.

The NHC report explains that offshore winds on the northern side of Irma's circulation initially caused water levels to recede below normal along much of the west coast of Florida, including Tampa Bay, leaving some normally submerged areas dry, allowing people to (inadvisably) walk out onto the bay floor and stranding boats and even manatees. At the McKay Bay Entrance near downtown Tampa, the NOS tide gauge measured a minimum water level of 7.4 feet below MHHW (4.7 feet below MLLW), more than 6 feet below normal tide levels. In St. Petersburg the bay sat about 5 feet below normal, and at Old Port Tampa the water was so low that the gauge could not obtain a reading for several hours.

WUSF described the scene as a kind of reverse storm surge and reported that Tampa Bay water levels dropped as much as six feet, consistent with the NHC gauge data.

When the winds turned, the water came back far lower than the warnings allowed for. The NHC report says NOS tide gauges in Tampa Bay generally recorded peak water levels of a little more than 1 foot above MHHW, with the highest, 1.7 feet, at the McKay Bay Entrance near downtown Tampa. It concludes that the Storm Surge Warning north of Charlotte Harbor, including Tampa Bay, did not verify, since inundation there stayed under 3 feet above ground, but calls the warning necessary because a slight westward shift in the track would have produced a much larger surge.

Researchers at the USF College of Marine Science later analyzed the event with the Tampa Bay Coastal Ocean Model. Their 2018 paper reports that both the observations and the model show a rapid negative storm surge followed by a positive surge as the wind direction changed, and that a large portion of the bay water was flushed out to the south and replaced by water carried in from along the coast to the north.

Tampa area stations recorded tropical storm force sustained winds and pressures between about 964 and 973 mb as Irma's center passed east of the bay.

Table 3 of the NHC tropical cyclone report lists the readings below for Hillsborough County stations. Wind speeds are in knots as NHC reports them, with the averaging period noted, and times are UTC on September 11, 2017.

The Plant City spotter's 63 kt reading came at 0142 UTC, a couple of hours before the eyewall and strongest winds arrived in that part of eastern Hillsborough County, according to the NHC report.

Tampa Electric's Irma outages peaked at 333,137 customers, according to the Florida Public Service Commission.

The Florida Public Service Commission 2018 review of hurricane preparedness and restoration charts State Emergency Operations Center outage reports for Irma and lists the Tampa Electric (TECO) maximum as 333,137 customers, against a statewide maximum of 6,523,814. The PSC notes that the statewide peak came on September 11, 2017, that the share of affected customers still without power fell below 50 percent three days later on September 14, and that by September 20 the number without power had dropped to 2 percent. Individual utility maximums occurred at different times and do not add up to the total.

Restoration was faster than after Hurricane Jeanne in 2004. At the PSC's May 2018 workshop, Tampa Electric (TECO) compared its time to complete restoration after Irma, 7 days, with 11 days after Hurricane Jeanne in 2004. The same review records that TECO reported ten transmission structure failures from Irma at that workshop, and that its forensic analysis identified three leaning structures.

The City of Tampa collected a total of 175,000 cubic yards of debris after Hurricane Irma.

The figure comes from an October 16, 2024 City of Tampa news post on cleanup after Hurricanes Helene and Milton. In it the city noted that back in 2017 a total of 175,000 cubic yards was collected after Hurricane Irma, while department leaders estimated the debris from Helene and Milton together at approximately 1,000,000 cubic yards, or 10,000 football fields. The city page itself now carries a notice that its information is 2 years old, so the 2024 estimate is best read as a dated figure.

The comparison is the practical lesson Tampa drew from Irma: a storm that passed inland and drained the bay still produced 175,000 cubic yards of debris in the city, and the two 2024 storms produced several times that.

Last verified: October 18, 2026, by re-reading the NHC Irma tropical cyclone report and archived advisories 40, 46, 48, 49 and 51, the Florida PSC 2018 hurricane review, the City of Tampa debris post, the USF College of Marine Science paper and the WUSF reverse surge report.