Thunderstorm pulls unusual and flashy all-nighter

Many residents are left with the hangover when a foul brew floods streets, downs wires and spends its fury in the wee hours.

From pea-sized hail on the beach in Treasure Island to record rainfall in Tampa to a washed-out Smooth Jazz Fest in Clearwater, the Tampa Bay area endured an unusually long and fiercely electric storm late Friday and early Saturday.

Residents throughout the bay area went to sleep Friday amid booms of thunder and explosive bolts of lightning. They awoke Saturday morning to some flooded streets, downed wires and out-of-service traffic lights.

Even the morning ritual of picking up the newspaper in the driveway was interrupted, as power went out Friday at the St. Petersburg Times printing plant on 34th Street in St. Petersburg, delaying delivery in many areas.

"What happened last night is not common here," said National Weather Service meteorologist Richard Rude, noting that rainfall topped a 12-year-old record at Tampa International Airport, logging in 3.45 inches for Friday. "That kind of storm is much more common in the Midwest."

The rain began Friday evening, and by midnight it was a deluge. Accompanied by lightning, thunder, hail and wind gusts of 50 mph, the storm blew away vendors' tents at the Smooth Jazz Fest in Clearwater and left 2 inches of standing water on the stage. Also in Clearwater, winds blew the roof and radio tower off a police substation on South Greenwood Avenue.

In downtown St. Petersburg, patrons attending early evening movies bought their tickets under clear skies but stepped back outside at the open-air BayWalk shopping complex to pouring rains. Bag 'n Baggage, a BayWalk luggage shop, did a booming business in umbrellas immediately before closing.

"We display them when it rains," employee Anja Todorovic said. "People don't always know we have umbrellas in a luggage store."

The winds collapsed a gas station canopy on Fourth Street N in St. Petersburg and a carport in South Tampa. Gulfport residents reported debris clogging street drains, and a lightning strike caused a small fire at a Pinellas Park home.

Rude, the meteorologist, traced Tampa Bay's dynamic weather to a large thunderstorm complex over the north central and northeast gulf area, including the Florida Panhandle and parts of Mississippi and Alabama, where a tornado razed two houses Friday. Rude said that as the storm moved south and east, it combined with a weak disturbance in the upper levels of the atmosphere to cause the unusually long storm in this area.

Rude also reports good news: Rain is not expected to return until Wednesday or Thursday. Said Rude: "We should be drying out for (today) and Monday."

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