The Tampa Bay area is going to be hit hard by a tropical tropical wave in Florida, as forecasted by the Florida Department of Meteorology

People in Florida are running out of time to evacuate ahead of Hurricane Milton making landfall along the state’s western coastline, now expected as early as Wednesday night.

The Tampa Bay area, which could take a direct hit from Milton, has been forecast to experience storm surge of up to 15 feet — less than two weeks after Hurricane Helene flooded the area. In 1921, the last time a major storm hit the area, it was the eye of the storm.

There is a storm surge warning in effect for Florida’s west coast from Flamingo northward to Yankeetown. The Suwannee River is included in the warnings of a storm for Bonita Beach. There is a Hurricane warning for the eastern part of the state from the St. Lucie-Martin County Line to Ponte Vedra Beach.

“Wherever the eye of the storm is, impacts are going to be far beyond there,” he said Tuesday. You should be getting started with your plan right now. If you’re going to get out, get out now. You have time today. Time will be running out very shortly if you wait any longer.”

Tampa Bay, Florida, is the most vulnerable city to storm surge flooding in the U.S. After Hurricane Irmosphere, Governor Ron DeSantis announced Tuesday

“If the dunes are high enough, they might prevent the flooding from storm surge,” she says. “If they are not high enough to prevent the flooding, these systems can dissipate at least the waves, and protect the ecosystems and infrastructure behind them.”

Tampa Bay’s shallow seabed and built-up coastline make it particularly vulnerable to hurricanes. A 2015 report from disaster modelers Karen Clarke & Co ranked the Tampa–St. Petersburg area as the most vulnerable city to storm surge flooding in the US. Despite multiple reports echoing the area’s vulnerability to storm surges, plans to beef up the area’s defenses have been delayed and in some cases vetoed by Florida governor Ron DeSantis. The area will need to deal with the most dangerous storm in a century and some of the storm defenses are decades old.

Member station WUSF reported that floods and winds damaged thousands of homes. At least 12 people near Tampa in Pinellas County died because of Helene.

More than 1,200 truckloads of debris have been removed from barrier islands in Pinellas County, and efforts to remove debris in the Tampa Bay region will continue until it’s no longer safe, Gov. Ron DeSantis said Tuesday.

“Roads and buildings can funnel the flow, creating areas of water flow convergence,” she says. The roads don’t give much resistance to the flow, so storm surge may be able to come inland more easily.

The wind pushes the water against the land lining a bay, she explains. “The land acts as a barrier to the water flow, and consequently the water accumulates in the coast.”

The crescent-like shape of Tampa Bay, which is 400 square miles, and the intensity and track of the hurricane also affect how intense the surge will be, according to Maitane Olabarrieta, a professor of coastal oceanography at the University of Florida and associate director of the university’s Center for Coastal Solutions.

“The wide continental shelf with shallow water allows storms like Helene and Milton to create very large storm surges,” Thomas Wahl, an associate professor of civil engineering at the University of Central Florida who studies flood-prone areas, tells NPR.

Projects to defend the bay from storm surge have not been completed quickly despite their vulnerabilities. Flooding after Hurricane Idalia in 2023 revealed that stormwater pipes were unmaintained, blocked by debris, and not equipped to push out floodwaters effectively, according to reporting in the Tampa Bay Times. In August the Clearwater City Council voted to increase stormwater utility fees to pay for upgrades to the draining system.

The metropolitan areas of Clearwater and St. Pete are located in the heart of the most densely populated part of the state, Pinellas. Barrier islands line its Gulf coast.

But other flood defense projects have been vetoed by DeSantis. A project that would replace 30-year-old stormwater infrastructure in the city of Dunedin in Pinellas County, which sits between the City of Tampa and the Gulf of Mexico, was vetoed for the 2024–25 fiscal year. Other flooding defense plans in Pinellas County that were vetoed include backup power at sewer pumps, emergency generators for fire stations, and defense of a theater from floodwater.