The Sunshine City vs. Lightning Capital of the World? (Tampa: living in, to move)

[celcius]

According to wiki, St. Petersburg averages 360 days of sunshine per year, yet it's practical neighbor, Tampa is dubbed the "lightning capital of the world."

Is there some sort of micro climate going on (St. Pete being on the peninsula) that substantiates this rather large climate difference between these two neighbor-like cities? ...or is one of these city nicknames undeserved?

Personally I find 360 sunshine days an astonishing record. With St. Pete being the national headquarters of wikimedia, I figured they could be self-promoting, but then again they have no reason to. Also, with me not living in Florida I could be completely wrong/surprised.

Can I get some opinions on this please?

[Lior Arel]

It's not that it only rains 5 days a year here in Tampa/St. Pete. In the summer it rains almost every day, usually we have T-Storms that roll in around 3 or 4pm and then around 6pm it clears away. Occasionally they can occur in the morning or last all evening, etc., but the usual pattern is just a couple of hours of storming then the all clear.

It hardly ever rains in the Winter. Nice weather if you like the tropics. I sure do!

[algia]

Actually, Orlando is worlds capital for lightning, in a regular afternoon thunderstorm, they record over 4000 lightning strikes....I watch that on TV all the time, it is very scary!

[Lior Arel]

There is kind of a feud between Orlando, Tampa, and some country in Africa about who has the most lightning. I love thunderstorms which is one of the things that I like here.

Really, if you were to compare the climates of St. Pete and Tampa it's nearly identical. Since St. Pete is on the Gulf there temperatures are moderated a bit from Tampa by about 1 or 2 degrees and they are more likely to see rain in the morning (really in the beach areas of Pinellas County). If I stay in the bay area I'd like to move over there, maybe to Gulf Port.

[tampaguy03]

I have been told that the "360" sunny days record was a while back, but it refers to the number of days the sun is out, even for 10 minutes.

[doom1001]

Out of those 360 days there's probably 110 days where the sun came out but it was one of those miserably hot,humid, rainy days in the summer.Another 90 days were probably gorgeous cloudless days in the winter and the rest were somewhere in the middle.

[yukon]

If you're looking for gorgeous, SUNNY weather, go west. Florida's nickname "the sunshine state" came from the orange juice industry, not from the weather. Dallas had more clear, cloudless, sunny days than Tampa does.

Regarding the St Pete/Tampa weather "difference", the storms build up over the east side of the metro area because that's usually where the east coast sea breeze meets the west coast breeze in the afternoon and t-storms form. Orlando, being even more central, tends to get even more storms. Or that's what our weather guys say, anyway.

[tonynorie]

Yukon is absolutely right about the seabreeze effect......the typical summertime pattern is that the converging seabreezes from the opposing coasts of Florida meet somewhere in the middle of the state (or to the west of east of center state) and air mass t-storms develop. Then, the prevailing steering currents move the storms in a (usually) western direction, taking them first over Tampa and later Pinellas.

The answer to your original question is that we have BOTH sunny days and a high rate of thunderstorms. Until about 20 years ago, a local paper in St. Pete would give away papers free if the sun didn't cast a shadow for that particular day......it was extremely rare that they gave them away.

[John G. W.]

Anyone in here remember the Evening Independent newspaper? It was a subsidiary of The St Pete Times that came out, well...in the evenings. Their policy was that the paper would be free on any day the sun didn't shine in Pinellas County. (And yes, there were days when the racks were unlocked and the paper was free!)
Now living in North Carolina, I miss my good ol' Tampa Bay Lightning Storms.
(And those beautiful Florida Sunsets!!!)

[jambo101]

Yeah i remember the free paper,but dont remember ever collecting one.
360 days of sunshine sounds good but when you are living there some find it a trifle boring(me).Whats the weather today? oh yeah hot, humid and sunny,just about the same as it was yesterday and same as it has been for the last 4 months.