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Tampa Bay area residents get respite from rain – for now

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By LISA A. DAVIS | The Tampa Tribune

Published: July 2, 2009

PORT RICHEY - Shortly before 8 a.m. today, Pauline O'Connell walked her beagle-mix dog, Molly, under blue and sunny skies on Rottingham Drive near Jason Road in the Holiday Hill Estates subdivision.

Less than 24 hours before, the road was under several feet of water after heavy rains flooded much of the area east of U.S. 19., including Holiday Hill Estates, Gulf Highlands and Palm Terrace Gardens.

"Oh the Lord saved us. We could only get to the top of the street and back," O'Connell, 67, said in an Irish brogue of trying to walk her dog on Wednesday.

In her seven years in the neighborhood, she has seen sitting water before but not like Wednesday.

"Yesterday was exceptional," she said.

But this morning there was not much left of the waters that had temporarily displaced about a dozen families Wednesday, a couple of which briefly stayed at the county's only open shelter at St. Mark's Presbyterian Church on State Road 52.

Ranch Road, Tamarix Avenue and Arbordale Drive, to name only a few, were no longer under water today. A small portion of Ironbark Drive, west of Meadow Drive in Palm Terrace Gardens, was still flooded early this morning.

For the most part, damp roads littered with debris and no-longer-needed barricades were the only signs of what the landscape was like the day before. Gone were the Progress Energy trucks, sheriff's cruisers, fire trucks and county vehicles that had also flooded the neighborhood on Wednesday.

In west Pasco County, areas northeast of Holiday got between 3 to 5 inches of rain, and in some places, as much as 6 inches, west of Land O' Lakes, according to National Weather Service radars, said John McMichael, a forecaster in Ruskin.

Tampa, where 15 families were evacuated from their homes in the Progress Village area of southeast Tampa because of heavy flooding, was drenched with 4.72 inches of rain Wednesday, McMichael said. It was the sixth wettest day on record for that date. The old record was 2.85 inches in 1955, McMichael said.

The outlook for today is much of the same, McMichael said. As of shortly after 9 a.m. Pinellas and Hillsborough counties were already seeing some rainfall moving onshore, he said. The entire Tampa Bay area remains under a flood watch through this evening.

Overall, the chance of rain in the Tampa Bay area for Thursday is 90 percent but the holiday weekend might fair better, he said. The chance of rain drops to 50 percent tomorrow, he said, and it gets even better through the weekend.

So, barbeque grills should be ready to go.

Reporter Lisa A. Davis can be reached at (727) 815-1083.

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