The Tampa plate. Relief from Copernicus GLO-30; rivers and lakes from USGS NHD; watersheds from the USGS Watershed Boundary Dataset; roads and city limits from Census TIGER 2024.
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4.25 inches of rain fell in two days, the most for this week of the year since records began in 1890. The next wettest, 4.22 inches, fell in 1916.
Tampa’s center stands about 30 ft above sea level. Within three miles the land runs from 0 ft to 70 ft, a difference of 70 ft: gently rolling country. Open water lies within three miles.
Under the town center the state geologic map shows Hawthorn Group, Arcadia Formation, Tampa Member (limestone), from the Late Oligocene to Middle Miocene, 12 to 28 million years old.
The section below crosses 2 rock units mapped at the surface.
Heights every 0.1 mile from the Copernicus GLO-90 surface model; vertical exaggeration about 64×. The colored band under the surface is the rock the state geologic map shows at the surface, not a picture of what lies beneath.
Limestone. Age: Late Oligocene to Middle Miocene, 12 to 28 million years old. About 9 mi of the line.
Sand, clay. Age: Pleistocene to Holocene, less than 2.6 million years old. About 7 mi of the line.
From the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation (Horton and others, 2017), the states’ geologic maps joined at a common scale.
Heights from Copernicus GLO-90 (a surface model: it includes buildings and tree canopy); summits from USGS GNIS; rivers from USGS NHDPlus HR; rock from the USGS State Geologic Map Compilation.
A raindrop that lands in Tampa reaches Tampa Bay and the Gulf of America by way of the Hillsborough: about 2 river miles.
Traced down the USGS NHDPlus V2.1 river network from the Census center point of Tampa; river miles along the main stem, rounded.
Tampa has a humid subtropical climate. Summer afternoons average 91° in June; winter nights fall to about 53° in January. About 50 inches of rain fall in a normal year.
On November 14 Tampa normally reaches 79° and falls to 61°. The record high is 88°, in 1993; the record low 37°, in 1968. The most rain on this date, 3.49 in, fell in 1954.
Normals 1991–2020 and records since 1890 from the Tampa Area threaded record (Tampa International Airport, 5 miles west-northwest). NOAA, through RCC-ACIS.
