After major weather surges Pinellas County is still rebuilding damage
from Hurricane Idalia and the recent tornado.

Hurricane Idalia formed on August 27th, 2023, and then turned into a Tropical storm shortly after. Idalia’s effects were felt on August 29-August 30 in the middle of the night in Pinellas County. Idalia didn’t hit Pinellas directly; it just barely skimmed the borders of it. It hit North Florida as a Category 3 and made landfall at Keaton beach with winds going up to 125 mph. Many weather predictions said Pinellas was going to be hit but even though it ended up changing courses the area received 3ft+ of storm surge. The highest report of rainfall went all the way up to 10.8 inches in Manatee County. Hurricane Idalia was the strongest hurricane to make landfall in the Big Bend, the nickname for the north Florida region, since the Cedar Key hurricane of 1896 with high winds going up to 125 mph. Due to the power of this hurricane, power outages occurred throughout Florida affecting 560,000 people. 1700 stayed in multiple shelters throughout Pinellas County for the hurricane as well. Beaches in the area took the majority of the damage with severe erosion from the sand being pushed in. Many walkways on the beach were ruined because the sand below them was washed away. The Mangroves in Honeymoon beach uprooted and the roads near the beaches were engulfed by sand. Aviel Voytovich(26’), a resident who lives near Honeymoon Island states “There were tree branches everywhere in my neighborhood and the beach looked really bad”. Pinellas County Coastal officials said this was the worst post storm erosion they’ve seen. Estimated repairs from Idalia will cost the cities around 600,000 and take a few months.

Before being given the chance to fully recover from the hurricane a tornado touched down in Florida on October 12, 2023. Pinellas residents woke up to damages, both major and minimal, after the tornado came through in the night. Clearwater suffered great flooding and strong winds especially near the water. So much so that a woman’s wall fell on her in her sleep during the storm. Her roof was also partially missing but even with those damages and waking up with rubble on her, she was completely uninjured. When the tornado first touched land it transformed from a waterspout to an EF-1 tornado then eventually to an EF-2. The tornado went through the Dunedin causeway then headed towards East Lake afterwards. A Dunedin local says their neighbor’s car got flipped over, bending the car and cracking the windshield, all in about 10 seconds. Thousands also lost power as a result of this tornado but got it back fairly quickly. Thankfully due to alerts Pinellas residents actually knew about this weather abnormality and were able to prepare in any way they could, ensuring them to always keep their alerts on just in case, like you always should.