How seriously is Tampa Bay taking Hurricane Helene?

In the last 13 months, Idalia, Debby and now Helene have posed the same vexing problems to Tampa Bay.

All put the region on high alert. As their reckoning drew nearer, all were slated to crash their centers into shores dozens of miles north of here.

None were our storms. Each became our problem.

With Helene’s eye charting a course for Florida’s panhandle Wednesday, Tampa Bay residents juggled official proclamations and recent history as they weighed how seriously to take the first major Florida hurricane of the 2024 season.

In some pockets, the familiar preparation rituals played out as they would with any other. As forecasters projected potentially life threatening storm surge, officials in Pasco, Pinellas and Hillsborough ordered those in flood-prone areas to leave their homes. Shoppers cleaned out the Brandon Costco of cases of water. Tampa General Hospital built 5-10 feet worth of “AquaFence” around its Davis Islands perimeter.

In other areas, people seemed eager to go about their business. In Pasco County, which is under a hurricane warning, officials worried public shelters would go unused. Kurt Browning, the top education official there, didn’t close schools a day ahead of the storm’s expected landfall, even as residents in the worst flood zone were told to evacuate. Wednesday was sunny, and people have had all hurricane season to prepare, he reasoned.

Just minutes before meteorologists officially deemed Helene a hurricane, Gov. Ron DeSantis spoke to reporters in Hillsborough County. He projected calm.

“I don’t believe in trying to scare everybody in trying to just say the only thing that can happen is worst-case,” DeSantis said. “You’re gonna have impacts far from the eye of the storm, that’s just a fact.”

A consistent forecast

Helene may be on the track trodden by Debby and Idalia, but it is unique in one key way: Its size.

The storm could send tropical storm force winds 250 miles east of its center, Bay News 9 chief meteorologist Mike Clay said. Although forecasters project Helene will slam into the panhandle, it is so massive that Jacksonville could get stronger winds than Tampa.

“It will be more like Irma in 2017, where pretty much the whole peninsula was getting tropical storm force winds,” Clay said.

The storm lay west of Cuba on Wednesday afternoon. Forecasters with the National Hurricane Center expected it to churn north through the Gulf of Mexico at a rapid clip, intensifying through the warm waters before making landfall as early as Thursday evening. As of the center’s 5 p.m. update, the Tampa Bay region laid outside the dreaded cone of uncertainty.

That means for the umpteenth consecutive storm, this region will likely be spared a direct hit from a major hurricane. That’s good news for the people here, and bad news for their neighbors to the north, who are expected to confront a Category 3 storm with maximum sustained winds of 125 mph.

More good news for Tampa Bay: The storm is moving so fast its worst effects won’t be felt here for long, Clay said.

But that also leaves little time to prepare.

Will people heed evacuation orders?

Evacuation orders issued by Pasco, Hillsborough and Pinellas officials Wednesday were met with a collective groan.

In some cases, literally. At Dell Holmes Park on Wednesday, when phones started blaring the alert in the morning, people sounded their annoyance.

“Zone A — that’s me,” said Maggie Clark, 49. Clark moved to her home along the banks of Lake Maggiore in 2015, and she’s always the first to be told to leave. She listens every time.

Between Hillsborough and Pinellas, more than half a million residents live in Zone A, the area officials ordered evacuated. The counties have opened shelters — though many evacuees are fleeing inland, escaping on the last flights out of town or sheltering in rapidly filling hotels.

Plenty are also staying put.

“Historically it has shown (if) we order an evacuation of Pasco County, people don’t move. They don’t listen,” Andrew Fossa told Pasco county commissioners Tuesday.

Stay or go, signs of preparation were all around Tampa Bay. Rec sports league games and bar trivia nights were cancelled; municipal operations were shuttered.

In Hillsborough County’s Rocky Creek area, just south of Hillsborough Avenue and north of Tampa Bay, sweat-drenched James and Diana Wilt placed sandbags along the perimeter of their home Wednesday afternoon. Their road often gets so flooded that cars can’t pass, even during regular rains.

The last major storm brought about 6 inches of water into their garage, they said, and came close enough to their front door that fish were flapping around on the sidewalk.

“We’ve never seen it come up that high before,” said James Wilt, who has lived on Gilbert Avenue since 2010. “We’re trying to prepare as much as we can.”

Times staffers Jeffrey S. Solochek, Dan Sullivan, Gabrielle Calise, Shauna Muckle, Jack Evans, Max Chesnes, Jack Prator and Michaela Mulligan contributed to this story.