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And a soggy, gloomy time was had by all

Like the butt end of a cruel cosmic joke, the young and the restless are waiting for a real spring break.

By EILEEN SCHULTE
Published March 22, 2005

CLEARWATER BEACH - There weren't a lot of wet T-shirt contests on Clearwater Beach on Monday afternoon.

Just wet T-shirts.

It was raining. Again.

Where are we? England?

For the second week in a row, bad weather has ruined the fun for sun-seeking students.

"It's not good weather for spring breakers," said Randy Rauch, a meteorologist at WTSP-Ch. 10.

Indeed.

Outside a T-shirt store, Laura Burns and a few fellow students from Muncie, Ind., were hanging out in the drizzle.

If it keeps raining, "we're going to run out of money to shop," she said.

"I'm wearing my bathing suit just in case," said Burns, a senior. "We'll pretend it's sunny and lay out anyway."

Certainly it's not Clearwater Beach Chamber of Commerce weather.

Sheila Cole, the executive director, answers the phone. "It's a beautiful day in Clearwater!" she greets a caller.

Oh, come on, Sheila. It is not.

"Yeah, this is not the usual weather," she admitted. "I'm sitting here watching the college students hanging out on the (hotel) balconies."

She said she's been fielding calls from bored students.

"We did get calls asking, "Where is the mall?"' Cole said. "We send them to the Clearwater Marine Aquarium, Beach Gameland. But they didn't come here for that. They came to show off their new bathing suits."

Or to drink.

But Tony Ferrandino, a bartender at the Seabreeze Lounge, said business "hasn't been that good." Only four people were inside; nobody was sitting on the patio.

In a downpour, there's only one thing to do.

"They go to the Hess station to buy their beer and drink it in their room," he said.

Count on two more days of that, said Rauch. He said Tampa Bay is in a typical winter storm weather pattern. Fronts are passing through with impulses of energy ahead of them.

He predicted it will rain through much of Wednesday, but Thursday, Friday and Saturday should be dry. On Sunday, another storm heads this way.

At the Sunny Motel, Nicole Whitfield, a clerk and St. Petersburg College student, played solitaire on the computer.

Laughter drifted down from a group of students who had rented a room upstairs.

"They try to go out, but when it rains, they come back in," Whitfield said. "So they got a keg of beer" and stayed in.

A couple of teenagers not invited to the party sat on a ledge outside the motel looking glumly out at the gloom.

Brian Cox, a sophomore at Dunedin High School, said he and his friends were "just chilling and relaxing."

Their plan?

Go eat and see some girls, they said.

But they won't be wearing bathing suits on the beach.

"Doesn't matter," they said.

--Eileen Schulte can be reached at 727 445-4153 or schulte@sptimes.com

[Last modified March 22, 2005, 01:21:16]