Rain from Milton flooded St. Pete’s Lake Maggiore: ‘I can’t believe what I’m seeing’

ST. PETERSBURG — Zac Gaydosh wanted to see his home. The 36-year-old had ridden out Hurricane Milton at a downtown St. Petersburg hotel, but at about noon Thursday, he was anxious to see what was left of where he has lived for the past three years.

The problem? His home was surrounded by water. Lake Maggiore had burst its banks and flooded Martin Luther King Street south of 26th Avenue and many surrounding neighborhoods and roads.

Lake Maggiore is in southern St. Petersburg, hemmed in by MLK Street to the east, 28th Avenue South to the north and Boyd Hill Nature Preserve to the south and west. The lake is known for its abundant bird life and alligators, some of them quite large. It feeds Salt Creek, which runs through Bartlett Park and into the Port of St. Petersburg. The lake — and the creek — are known to exceed their banks, but Thursday’s flood surprised even some longtime residents.

It’s one of several places in the Tampa Bay area that experienced unprecedented water levels after Hurricane Milton dumped record rainfall Wednesday and Thursday.

Gaydosh wasn’t fazed. He pulled his inflatable paddleboard from the back of his SUV and started filling it with air.

”You going to go in there with them gators?” a passerby in a red sedan asked as a half question and half warning.

“Thank you,” Gaydosh said, without missing a beat on the hand pump. Gaydosh wasn’t sure what he would find.

He knew the water was likely in his and his neighbors’ yards, but he hoped it wasn’t in his home.

”I have to go look no matter what I find,” he said. Five minutes later, he paddled south on MLK Street past 27th Avenue South, took a right turn, and disappeared.

Joshua Campbell, 68, watched Gaydosh paddle away. As a teenager, he remembered collecting fish from the lake’s banks after floods, but he had never seen the water rise into so many of the streets in the area, not even from Hurricane Helene a couple of weeks ago.

”No way. Not this high. Nope,” said Campbell, wearing a “Jesus Saves” shirt and a large cross around his neck. “I can’t believe what I’m seeing.”

About a half mile south at Lake Shore Park, Mike Jinks, 65, and Jerry Gilchrist, 77, agreed that they had never seen the water so high. The lake had spread across Martin Luther King Street and inundated several mobile homes on the Lake Shore property. Most of the owners had not returned yet, though Jinks and Gilchrist had warned some of them via phone about what to expect.

”It’s sad because that water is going to wreck everything,” said Gilchrist, a retired long-haul truck driver who has lived in the mobile home park for 11 years.

Hurricane Milton did not damage Jinks’ or Gilchrist’s homes. The high winds, however, tore away at least one carport and damaged several others on the property. The flooding is what Gilchrist will remember.

”I’ve never seen anything like it here, and I never want to see it again,” he said, then returned to work fixing one of his neighbor’s damaged carports.