Hurricane Ian drained the waters of Tampa Bay. Did that affect the environment?

When Hurricane Ian made landfall on the Florida Peninsula, the retreat of Tampa Bay was a sure sign that tropical troubles were on the way.

Many locals remember Hurricane Irma, which flooded the bay five years ago. A similar scene was revealed in Ian’s “Reverse Storm Tide”. It is a bare seabed. A boat moored in a waterless marina. Curious bystanders ignore meteorologists’ warnings and take a closer look at the strange phenomenon.

But now that the waters have returned to the bay and the storm is long gone, researchers think: Did Ian’s reverse storm surge, which lowered water levels by more than 7 feet in some areas, changed the amount of nutrient pollution in Tampa Bay, and if so, what did that mean for the health of the bay?

“When it comes to gulf nutrition management, hurricanes are one of multiple interacting stressors affecting gulf health,” said Elise Morrison, assistant professor of environmental engineering at the University of Florida.

Morrison and a team of University of Florida researchers have been sampling Tampa Bay every other week since April 2021 for nutrients such as the nitrogen and phytoplankton that fuel the algal blooms. Just as Piney He Point’s wastewater disaster began to unfold. For Ian, they collected water samples at his four locations in the bay (Piney Point Creek, Bishop Harbor, Joe Bay and St. Joseph Sound) before and after the storm.

While the UF analysis was finalized, Texas A&M-Corpus Christi researchers who studied similar reverse storm surges in Corpus Christi Bay during Hurricane Harvey in 2017 found that nutrient contamination “changed significantly” in the days following Harvey’s landfall. I did.”

A 3-foot drop in water levels (which the researchers call “hydrological gravitational pull”) led to an increase in ammonium, followed by floods of nitrates and salinity water about two weeks after landfall. Science is a peer-reviewed journal focused on human-ocean interactions.

“There is a connection between land and sea,” said Dorina Murgulet, professor of hydrogeology at the university and author of the study. “When the sea level drops sharply, it pulls groundwater strongly toward the sea, bringing nutrients into the bay at a faster rate than normal.”

In general, whether storm surges are a silver lining or a drawback for estuary health depends on what each estuary needs and does not need.

“That could be a good thing, as it could be feeding nitrogen-depleted estuaries. There is a possibility.

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Preliminary reports indicate that Hurricane Ian sucked more water out of Tampa Bay than 2017’s Irma. This was the last time a major hurricane caused eerie phenomena.

In the most extreme cases, water levels in Tampa Bay retreated more than 1 inch (7 feet) below sea level, according to the National Weather Service’s post-hurricane report. It occurred at the mouth of Hillsborough Bay shortly after 7:30 pm on September 28th.

According to Tyler Fleming, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Tampa Bay, about 1 inch (6 feet) below sea level at the mouth of Mackay Bay in 2017 than during Hurricane Irma. It is said that there are many feet.

“Typically, the tide doesn’t get this negative in the bay,” says Fleming.

The unique shape of Tampa Bay combined with Ian’s position created what Fleming called the “funnel effect.” As the storm approached the peninsula south of the Bay Area, counterclockwise winds began to push water. With nowhere to go but to exit the mouth of the bay, the effects of receding water are amplified, Fleming said.

According to Ed Sherwood, executive director of the Tampa Bay Estuary Program, it usually takes one to three months after an event like Hurricane Ian for the impact on water quality at the estuary to become more apparent.

“Impacts on water quality from both the negative surge and the subsequent large influx from Ian rainfall are unlikely to be visible in the Gulf anytime soon,” Sherwood wrote in an email. Over the next few months, specific to Tampa Bay, we need to learn more about the water quality benefits and impacts of storm passage.”