The Tampa Bay Storm of May, 1979

Abstract

The first six months of 1979 provided the Tampa Bay area with its fair share of anomalous weather patterns that not only confused and amazed professional meteorologists, but served the complacent public with notice that “it can happen here!” While all of the climatic variances that occurred during this period are note-worthy, the subject of this paper is the anomalous storm that occurred along a narrow band of unforecastable convergence in Pinellas and Hillsborough counties on Tuesday, May 8, 1979.