Tampa

The weather in Tampa is fairly predictable.

Hot and humid in the summer. Not as hot as you may think. But far more humid than you could imagine. It is the price we pay not to shovel snow for five months.

Summer afternoon thunderstorms can drop several inches of rain…in a matter of minutes. And they can be very localized. It’s not unusual to have it rain violently on one side of the street, with nary a drop on the other side of the double yellow line.

Winters are mild. It’s generally a paradise climate with little precipitation, temperatures in the 70s and fairly reasonable humidity. That’s not to say it can’t get cold. (“Cold” being a relative term.) After more than 30 years, I have seen it snow here. I have seen frost. And my yard has suffered from some devastating hard freezes. But never is winter in Tampa comparable to anything I survived in Boston or Buffalo or Pittsburgh or North Jersey.

The season I miss the most? Fall. There is nothing like late September, early October up north.

Spring in Tampa is in name only. Truly just part of the rapid ramp-up to summer.  And what there is of it can be a mixed bag.

One spring morning not long ago, I awoke to a pea-soup fog that had blanketed Tampa. I grabbed my camera, drove downtown, and spent the next four hours walking around on a self-imposed “assignment.” My goal was to make the most of the fog, photographically.

The town is almost always bright and sunny. On this day, I felt it would be fun to take advantage of gloomy and overcast.