Tampa Bay Area, FL

Weather Forecast Office

Tampa Bay / Tarpon Springs Hurricane of 1921

Click to view the NWS Tampa Bay 1921 Hurricane Story Map — Click on the image above to view the NWS Tampa Bay 1921 Hurricane Story Map.

Overview

On October 25, 1921, the Tampa Bay Area suffered 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. The highest storm surge inundated areas in downtown Tampa and Tarpon Springs. Many vessels, like the steamer “Favorite”, and the “Thomas B. Garland” were smashed against the docks by the waves. Other ships became unmoored and smashed into the docks and seawalls, causing additional destruction, or sank. Still other vessels moved inland with the surge and became beached as the water receded. Waves from the Bay were almost breaking in the streets of Ybor City. Numerous structures near the coast sustained heavy damage from being washed out by the storm surge. Structures further inland had to endure the powerful winds that also accompanied the storm. Winds were estimated at 120 mph near the landfall point in Tarpon Springs. The Tampa Weather Office at the time reported a peak wind of 75 mph with the storm. Numerous power poles and trees were downed from the winds, roofs were badly damaged, and windows were blown out of structures.

Agriculture, and the citrus industry in particular, was also hard hit by the storm, which destroyed entire crop fields from the winds and the surge caused salt water intrusion into the soils which prevented some crops from being able to return in future seasons.

There were eight confirmed fatalities, nearly half due to drowning as the storm surge inundated near shore locations, and others from the hazards of the fallen debris like live wires.

Without the support of modern tools, such as satellites, radars, computer graphics, and mathematical models, the forecast for such an event was extremely difficult as it was completely dependent on sparse marine and land observations. Most of the hurricane forecasts in those days were based on climatological data from previous hurricanes, which suggested that in general, cyclones moving over the Gulf of Mexico had a tendency of passing well north of Tampa.

Videos
Damage Photos
Then & Now
Original Charts
Model Simulations
Storm Track
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1921 Tampa/Tarpon Springs Hurricane: Videos

1921 Tampa/Tarpon Springs Hurricane: Damage Photos

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Palmetto Waterfront In Palmetto the entire waterfront was inundated. Photo courtesy of Florida Maritime Museum/Manatee County Public Library System.	St. Pete Yacht Club Many coastal homes and businesses were flooded in Pinellas County. Photo courtesy of St. Petersburg Museum of History.	Parker St. Tampa City streets in Tampa became only navigable by boat. Photo courtesy of Tampa Bay History Center.
Ybor Channel Vessels moored in port carrying goods and cargo were not spared either. Large and small vessels alike experienced similar fates and were smashed into docks. Photo courtesy of Preserve America Initiative.	Yacht Basin Many vessels broke free of mooring and drifted into seawalls, beaches, and docks, smashing into these structures repeatedly. Photo courtesy of Tampa Bay History Center.	Docks Destroyed The repeated battering caused significant structural damage. Photo courtesy of St. Petersburg Museum of History.
Cortez Public School Photo courtesy of Florida Maritime Museum/Manatee County Public Library System.	Albion Inn in Cortez The Albion Inn, located in Cortez, a staple of the community, was badly damaged by the surge. Photo courtesy of Florida Maritime Museum/Manatee County Public Library System.	Cortez Docks The docks located in the small fishing community of Cortez were completely destroyed. Photo courtesy of Florida Maritime Museum/Manatee County Public Library System.
Cortez Docks Docks like these provided an important source of revenue for the communities they served. Photo courtesy of Florida Maritime Museum/Manatee County Public Library System.	Cortez Docks The destruction of such docks was a blow to local economies. Photo courtesy of Florida Maritime Museum/Manatee County Public Library System.	Cortez Boathouse Scenes of destruction similar to these occurred areawide, and had similar economic impacts to the region. Photo courtesy of Florida Maritime Museum/Manatee County Public Library System.
St. Petersburg Boats moored along the St. Petersburg waterfront were also thrown into docks. Photo courtesy of St. Petersburg Museum of History.	St. Petersburg St. Petersburg waterfront damage. Photo courtesy of St. Petersburg Museum of History.	St. Petersburg Many vessels partially or completely sunk due to the fierceness of the battering. Photo courtesy of St. Petersburg Museum of History.
St. Petersburg Pier The iconic St. Petersburg municipal pier was all but destroyed. Photo courtesy of St. Petersburg Museum of History.	Pass-a-Grille Pass-a-Grille's main hotel on the beach sustained significant damage. Photo courtesy of St. Petersburg Museum of History.	Pass-a-Grille Docks were also completely destroyed along the community waterfront. Photo courtesy of St. Petersburg Museum of History.
Palmetto Beach Significant impacts from storm surge were also felt in Palmetto Beach. Photo courtesy of Florida Maritime Museum/Manatee County Public Library System.	Palmetto Beach Some structures were completely washed away during the storm. Photo courtesy of Florida Maritime Museum/Manatee County Public Library System.	Palmetto Beach Many others that managed to withstand being completely washed away were structurally compromised. Photo courtesy of Tampa Bay History Center.
Tampa's Bayshore Blvd Tampa's Bayshore Blvd, near the location of some of the highest recorded surge, was badly damaged. Photo courtesy of Tampa Bay History Center.	Tampa's Bayshore Blvd The power of the water completely destroyed sections of the seawall that would normally protect the road and homes built along it. Photo courtesy of Tampa Bay History Center.	Tampa's Bayshore Blvd The powerful storm surge was far higher than the seawall and road. Water continued well-inland in some spots. Photo courtesy of Tampa Bay History Center.
Tampa Water made its way into homes and businesses from Hyde Park, to Downtown Tampa, and into the fringes of Ybor City. Photo courtesy of Tampa Bay History Center.	Tampa Tampa's transportation infrastructure was completely crippled. Photo courtesy of Tampa Bay History Center.	Tampa Not only were roads washed out, tracks running along the shoreline were as well. Debris littered the ground and the electricity powering the city was cut. Photo courtesy of Tampa Bay History Center.
Tampa Roads were made impassible due to fallen power poles and trees. Photo courtesy of Tampa Bay History Center.	Tampa Windows were blown out of homes, and roofs were badly damaged. Photo courtesy of Tampa Bay History Center.	Tampa Large trees were ripped out of the ground, including some in front of the Tampa Bay Hotel. Photo courtesy of Tampa Bay History Center.
Ybor City Strong winds toppled power lines, cutting off electricity to many neighborhoods. Photo courtesy of Tampa Bay History Center.	Ybor City In the most urban areas with larger buildings, the gaps between buildings acted like a wind tunnel, forcing the winds to accelerate causing additional damage. Photo courtesy of Tampa Bay History Center.	Stranded Vessel Some vessels floated inland as the water rose, becoming beached on dry land. Photo courtesy of Tampa Bay History Center.

1921 Tampa/Tarpon Springs Hurricane: Surface Charts

October 21, 1921	October 22, 1921	October 23, 1921	October 24, 1921	October 25, 1921	October 26, 1921
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1921 Tampa/Tarpon Springs Hurricane: Storm Statistics

Category	Value
Storm Dates	October 20-30, 1921
Peak Winds	140 mph (Category 4)
Death Toll / Fatalities	~ 8
Minimum Central Pressure	941 mb (27.79 inches)
Landfall Winds (Florida)	120 mph (Category 3)
Maximum Winds in Tampa	75 mph
Landfall Pressure (Tarpon Springs, FL)	952.25 mb (28.12 inches)
Maximum Storm Surge (Tampa Bay)	~ 10.5 feet
Maximum Rainfall (St. Leo) / Tampa Weather Bureau	11.73 inches / 8.53 inches

1921 Tampa/Tarpon Springs Hurricane: Interactive Track (Mouseover icons on map for more info)

1921 Tampa/Tarpon Springs Hurricane: Then & Now

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Tampa Riverwalk

Delaware Street (Hyde Park)

Parker Street (near Bayshore Blvd)

1921 Tampa/Tarpon Springs Hurricane: Model Simulations

In anticipation of the 100th anniversary of the 1921 Tarpon Springs/Tampa Bay Hurricane, the National Weather Service in Ruskin, FL embarked on a project, in which an attempt was made to simulate this long ago hurricane utilizing the state-of-the-art Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) Model. Until recently, the earliest reanalyses datasets in which to initialize these research models began with the year 1948, leaving out many important 20th century events, such as the 1921 Hurricane and the 1930’s Dust Bowl. The NOAA-CIRES-DOE Twentieth Century Reanalysis (20CR) project was designed to generate four-dimensional global atmospheric datasets of weather spanning 1836 to 2015, in order to place current atmospheric circulation patterns into a historical perspective. More information on these datasets can be found at https://psl.noaa.gov/data/20thC_Rean/.

In this simulation, the Advanced Research WRF (ARW) was initialized from the 20CR datasets at a 12km horizontal resolution and 60 vertical levels beginning at 1200UTC on October 21, 1921. The model was allowed to run forward in time over a domain covering much of the Caribbean, Gulf of Mexico, Continental United States, and Western Atlantic Ocean for a total forecast period of 120 hours. Boundary conditions to the model domain were obtained from 6-hourly 20CR reanalysis datasets corresponding to the hour of the simulation.

IR Satellite - Color Enhanced

The results of select variables/graphics from this simulation are presented below. The simulation of a weather pattern from 100 years ago using today's technology produced a hurricane, that 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 Florida.

Other features of the 1921 hurricane that were reported to be fact also appear to have been well forecast by the model, including the large areal size of the cyclone, and a large swath of preceding rainfall to the northeast of the hurricane, that soaked much of the Florida peninsula as much as 24 hours ahead of the main cyclone impacts.

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Infrared Satellite & Radar (dbz)

Wind Speed (knots)

1921 Tampa/Tarpon Springs Hurricane: Other Links