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Tampa Bay area drenched with 3 inches

By AARON SHAROCKMAN
Published June 1, 2006

It was as if the hurricanes huddled Thursday, checked the calendar and realized their time had come.

And so, around 3:30 p.m., for the first time most anyone can remember, it rained.

It poured, actually — 3 inches in two hours. More rain than had fallen in all of May. Or April. Or March. Across most of the Tampa Bay area.

Winds hit 60 mph in northeast St. Petersburg, toppling a Village Inn sign along 4th Street N. Pea-sized hail speckled cars and streets and sidewalks.

Lightning brightened the charcoal sky. Thunder made people’s ears rattle.

Most agreed: It felt great.

Bobby Thomas, 45, sat under a canopy at Wildwood Park in St. Petersburg and watched the baseball field flood, chuckling as lightning spiked the tree tops.

The rain that raced into the storm sewers took some of the pollen with it. A day without Flonase was worth a celebration, Thomas said.

“I don’t mind this one bit,” said Thomas, extending a soaked hand.

Bill Brock, 37, didn’t fret about his slogged commute home from Clearwater to St. Petersburg along Interstate 275. Finally, the lawn of his Kenwood home was getting wet.

“It’s good to see the rain today,” said Brock, sitting on his porch with a friend.

By 5 p.m., 3 inches of rain had accumulated in St. Pete Beach, 2.5 inches in other parts of Pinellas and 1.84 inches at Tampa International Airport.

It hadn’t rained since May 9, and only 21/2  inches had fallen in the area since March 1.

Moisture blowing in from the Atlantic Ocean was the cause for Thursday’s storm, a typical summer pattern affecting the state, National Weather Service meteorologist Russell Henes said.

Rain that started in the morning on the east coast of Florida grew into severe thunderstorms by the time it ran into the west Florida coastal sea breeze, Henes said.

More than 5,500 Progress Energy customers lost power in St. Petersburg during the storm, the utility reported.

In Hillsborough County, Marcos Hernandez, 19, and Pablo Vargas, 24, spent the day working on a roof of a new house in FishHawk Ranch.

When they started, the sky was clear and hot. Roofing is hard work in the heat; you get exhausted quickly. They took their shirts off, and the dust settled on their skin. Then, about 3:30 p.m., Hernandez felt a cool breeze.

He looked up and saw the clouds rolling in.

He felt the first drop of rain on his back.

“It feels nice,” he said.

The rain was back.

And for one day, at least, that was all right.

Staff writer S.I. Rosenbaum contributed to this report.

[Last modified June 1, 2006, 21:15:17]