TAMPA, Fla. — For Labor Day weekend, experts predict Hurricane Idalia likely helped mitigate red tide blooms in the Tampa Bay area.
As a professor at USF's College of Marine Science, Robert Weisberg explained luckily for us, Hurricane Idalia helped make sure we don’t see any red tide this Labor Cay weekend.
"The organism itself does not like a lot of turbulence. It likes calm water. The hurricane of course is anything, but calm water," Weisberg said.
Storms can make red tide worse. Take 2018 for example, when Tropical Storm Gordon rolled through our area.
"Gordon actually took some of the red tide cells that were actually in bloom that were offshore at the time and drove those up into the panhandle," Weisberg explained.
This time around, there was no red tide in our area at the time of the storm. Still, no red tide has been detected on the map. That’s not to say the water is safe. Weisburg explained there could be harmful bacteria in some waterways.
"I wouldn’t be surprised if our sewage systems got overloaded with the rain, so you wind up dumping some of the less than completely treated water into the coastal zone," Weisberg said.
When it comes to estuaries and inlets, Those are waterways Weisburg said people should stay out of.
"The estuaries are catch basins for runoff from rivers."
So while we won’t see red tide, it doesn’t mean the water is safe.
"After a major storm, it is probably not a good idea to go in the water," Weisberg added.
As for when we could see red tide, Weisberg said the seasonal forecast shows we could see a harmful algal bloom this fall.