Water swept into Judi Lee’s house in Lithia overnight and by morning reached her chest. She evacuated her cats to the roof. On Tuesday afternoon, she and a neighbor waded toward the main road through waist-deep waters, doubting anything inside her home could be saved. It’s the second time in two years water has flooded Lee’s home, a half-mile from the Alafia River. The river rose to 19.5 feet by Tuesday morning, according to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration data, the highest since Hurricane Irma in 2017. “We lost everything,” Lee said. “Some have high houses, and some don’t. That’s the difference.”
Storm forecasters say it often: Look at the potential impacts of a storm, not just those eye-catching wind speed numbers that determine a hurricane’s category. Hurricane Debby showed why. As forecast, Debby passed Tampa Bay as a tropical storm without making landfall here, but it moved in slow motion. Inch after inch, hour after hour, feeder bands of rain lashed the region, causing water to pool along roads and overflow from swollen rivers. Though Debby was far weaker than recent Florida hurricanes like Idalia and Ian, becoming at its peak a Category 1 storm, familiar images of washed-out roads and inundated homes like Lee’s nonetheless emerged from the greater Tampa Bay region. At least four deaths across Florida were attributed to the storm.
In southeastern Hillsborough County, the storm’s deluge caused extensive flooding in parts of Lithia and Riverview on Tuesday. Jordyn Nicholson waited for help with her horse Cahyanne, sharing a small patch of dry ground along Lithia Pinecrest Road. John Reilly, from his home along BullFrog Creek in Riverview, used a kayak to evacuate his baby daughter, wife, mother, dogs, and cats from their flooded two-bedroom home. Once again, it was the water, not the wind, that brought destruction. Parts of Hillsborough and Pinellas counties saw 10 to 14 inches of rain, respectively. To the south, parts of Sarasota and Manatee counties reported rainfall totals from Saturday through Tuesday morning of 18 to 21 inches. That’s the kind of rain you’d expect within the eyewall of a storm making a direct impact, said Stephen Shiveley, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Tampa Bay office, but it’s rarer with an offshore storm like Debby.
Shiveley said it’s difficult for forecasters to predict where those feeder bands will dump the most rain, “but we knew someone was going to get it.” A slight wobble in the track, Shiveley said, and those feeder bands could have shifted over more rural Highlands or DeSoto counties. “Or it could have shifted 10 miles east, and then we’d be talking about, you know, downtown Tampa underwater.”
“If you get stuck under one of those bands, the rain just hits over and over again because the next cell keeps coming,” Shiveley said. “We were briefing for days that the impact would be those inland flooding concerns. And that’s exactly what we got.” By noon on Tuesday, rescuers pushed through floodwaters to bring 210 people and 2 horses to higher ground in Manatee County, said county communications manager Casey Zempel.
In Lakewood Ranch, Bridget Lopez stood in her entryway Tuesday, Shop-Vac in hand, endeavoring to dry the water-stained wall above her baseboards. She moved to the Star Farms neighborhood this year, figuring that leaving Miami would mean a relief from the brunt of hurricane season. Early Monday, the large retention pond behind her home overflowed, overwhelming the street’s two small drains. Her neighbor’s car began to float as the water crept toward new-built homes. Wind carried the water to her doorstep. “It wasn’t even a hurricane,” said Lopez, 33. “It was just rain.” The houses in this development, one of dozens of projects sprouting in fields around Manatee, sell for almost $500,000. They’re not in a flood zone, so most residents don’t have insurance, but a plethora of retention ponds create risk.
“Why weren’t they lowered?” Lopez wondered. “There was time.” Down the street, an insurance inspector measured moisture levels in a home belonging to Heidi and Van Vilchez. The inspector pressed a meter to the wall: 90%.
“I think construction debris clogged the drains,” said Heidi Vilchez, 36. “I want to see measures taken to make sure this doesn’t happen again.” Further south, off of Bahia Vista Street in Sarasota County’s Pinecrest neighborhood, cars sat stalled out in pooling water on closed sections of road. Liberty Baptist Church parking lot was completely flooded. There, the worst of the flooding came Monday as record rainfall and minor surge sent Philippi Creek spilling over. Rescue crews in airboats and specialized vehicles helped more than 300 people evacuate underwater homes. Water nearly reached roof level in some areas, said state rescue specialist Nick Stolts. His crew rescued 70 people on Monday, and on Tuesday were patrolling to assess damage and pull any stragglers. In neon shirts, white helmets, and waders, they trudged through water to knock on doors.
A few houses up, where the worst of the water had receded, Erin Cabinoff moved furniture in her living room away from where water pushed in. She and her kids had pressed layers of rolled towels along the sliding back door, but the damage was unavoidable. Their pool is filled with mud. Her car, likely totaled. “We’ve lived here for four years, and it’s never come close to flooding,” said Cabinoff, 39, carrying her two-year-old.
Riverview resident Kurt McAnly doesn’t remember seeing this much destruction in just a few hours. In all the years he’s lived around BullFrog, he’s seen many storms, but this prolonged rain was too much, he said. ”It was just crazy,” McAnly said. “The last time I saw anything like this was in 1999. … It’s a total disaster.” McAnly, who’d evacuated around 4 a.m. with his dogs, was trying to gather his thoughts and salvage the little he could from his flooded home: his beloved guitars, his grill, and family pictures. Water rose more than two feet inside. ”Everything is completely destroyed,” McAnly said. “The interior of the house, the pool — there’s no way to recover this house now. It was built in 1983. There are so many memories.”
William Everets, 67, lives next door. His house sits on stilts and wasn’t badly damaged. He considered himself lucky. County officials were content with their preparedness. Tim Dudley, Hillsborough’s emergency management director, said officials tracked the storm for a week, planning for a worst-case scenario that never played out: rapid intensification. “I think the readiness level and coming out the gate for this — we’re in a good place this year,” Dudley said.
Hillsborough authorities opened one evacuation shelter at Erwin Technical College, with two more on standby. Over two nights, 90 people and three pets stayed there. “The greatest challenge is getting everyone to realize that every storm has its own risks and impacts,” said Cathie Perkins, Pinellas County’s emergency management director. “I never like people to say it’s just a tropical storm.” The county reported 21 rescue calls to 911, compared to more than 50 calls during Hurricane Idalia last year. Pinellas had shelters ready, but officials chose not to open them or issue evacuations. Most of those calling for rescue said they would finish out the storm with friends or family, Perkins said.
“We opened a lot of shelters for Ian and Idalia, and we didn’t see people coming in,” she said. “We want to open if there’s true risk, but we also want to be like, ‘What does the community really need?’” Perkins said she worries about hurricane fatigue. “It can be exhausting when you’re getting alert after alert after alert,” she said. “It might be annoying, but we’re trying to send out life-safety information. We want to make sure that people know where they can go if they need help, or how to get help, or who to call.”
Had the storm spent any longer in the balmy waters of the Gulf of Mexico, Debby likely would have been a major hurricane when it made landfall. “Just a little bit of variation in that track on one side of Cuba … would have been really disastrous for Florida,” said Jeff Masters, a hurricane scientist formerly with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The storm’s move northward was pushing drier air into the Tampa Bay region on Tuesday, forecasters said, which will decrease rain chances over the next few days and help dry things out. Times staff writers Michaela Mulligan, Lauren Peace, Christopher O’Donnell, Juan Carlos Chavez, Jack Prator, and Langston Taylor contributed to this story.
