Hurricanes and Tornadoes That Hit Clearwater, FL

The nearest NOAA station with 1991–2020 climate normals is St Petersburg International Airport, FL, 5 miles southeast of Clearwater at 11 feet. August is the warmest, with an average high of 91°F and low of 76°F; January is the coolest, at 71°F and 53°F. July is the wettest at 9.7 inches of precipitation on average and November the driest at 1.6 inches; the year adds up to 53.5 inches over 72 days with at least a tenth of an inch. June to November, the hurricane season months, bring 71% of the year's precipitation (37.9 of 53.5 inches); the other six months are drier. September has brought the most of the 79 tropical systems that passed within 75 miles (28); a normal September there has highs of 89°F and 6.4 inches of precipitation. Highs reach 90°F on about 94 days a year, almost all from May to October. A night below freezing comes less than once a year on average. That 53.5 inches is more than at 53 of the 125 Florida stations used on this site (42%). Dunedin, 4 miles north, has its own station (Tarpon Spgs Sewage Plt, FL): 54.4 inches a year, 0.9 more than here, and the same August average high, 91°F.

Water temperature at the NOAA tide station Clearwater Beach, FL, 5 miles west, averaged 90°F in July and 64°F in January over 2021–2025. It averaged 80°F or warmer from May to September. Sea level at the Clearwater Beach tide gauge, 5 miles from Clearwater, has risen 1.72 ± 0.10 inches per decade from 1973 to 2025, NOAA's linear trend; at that pace it is 17.2 inches in a hundred years. That is faster than at 109 of the 144 U.S. gauges with a NOAA trend.

Since 1996, the National Weather Service has logged 182 flood, rain, thunderstorm wind and lightning events that began within 10 miles of Clearwater: 101 thunderstorm wind reports, 64 lightning strikes, 15 heavy rain events, 1 flash flood and 1 flood. They killed 9 people and injured 24, and the NWS estimated $4.3 million in property and crop damage. The strongest thunderstorm gust on record here was 78 mph, on December 16, 2007.

Flood insurance policyholders in Clearwater's 10 ZIP codes have filed 4,379 claims with the National Flood Insurance Program since 1978, and were paid $375.6 million for buildings and contents, in the dollars of each year. The most came from Hurricane Helene in 2024: 2,197 claims (50% of all) and $325.8 million, then Blizzard of 1993 in 1993 with 591 and Hurricane Milton in 2024 with 287. 90% of the claims carry the name of a storm or flood event; the rest have no event name. Of the 340 Florida cities on this site with 10 or more claims, 317 have fewer than Clearwater.