In December of 2024, three water level sensors and weather stations were installed in coastal areas along the Pasco County Coastline. The sensors are located along the Pithlachascotee River at the Port Richey Water Front Park, at the Energy and Marine Center, and at Skeleton Key Marina in Hudson. These digital sensors measure the water level, as well as weather conditions including air temperature, wind speed and direction, rainfall, and solar radiation.
The SECOORA (Southeast Coastal Ocean Observing Regional Association) Southeast Water Level Network is supporting the installation and operation of these sensors at no cost to the community. The team at Florida Atlantic University (FAU) is working to install these sensors throughout Florida. The established tide and weather network will help to increase community resilience and emergency management response in Pasco County, through long-term coastal flooding data collection.
How can these sensors help me?
These sensors provide free real-time water height and weather condition data to the community, reflecting local conditions and impacts near you!
- Monitor the current ocean conditions
- Increase community resilience
- Record flooding events and long-term sea level impacts
Access Data
The best way to access the data is through the SECOORA and SenseStream websites. Here you can find individual data for specific sensor locations, showing current measurements as well as data from the last 3 months. Data can be shown as graphs or individual data recording points. Data is recorded live every 5 minutes.
The data for each site can be found below:
Please note that the current tide height measurements on the SECOORA Site are based on the height of the sensors to the water surface. The heights will be calibrated to true mean mean sea level once the measurements have had time to verify (summer 2025). To verify true tidal height conditions please use the SenseStream data until the SECOORA sites have been calibrated.
Tide and Weather Data
The newly installed sensors measure real-time for the local coastal areas of Pasco County. This data can be used to assess water depth, tidal phase, wind speed, rainfall, air temperature, and more! Having access to current weather and tide information can help you understand the best conditions for outdoor water recreation and plan the best day for boating, fishing, kayaking, or relaxing at the beach!
Public safety: Monitoring tidal and weather data can also keep you safe during dangerous conditions. Conditions on the water or in coastal areas can change quickly as tides shift and storms brew.
Coastal Resiliency
Florida’s Gulf Coast has experienced more than its fair share of flooding and extreme weather in 2024, with three direct hurricane impacts. The combination of tides, storm surges, and heavy rainfall has resulted in repeated flooding of coastal areas, especially in Pasco County. While tide prediction and storm surge models could make predictions, Pasco lacked the coastal water level sensors to measure the true rate, timing, and maximum height of the tides that resulted in flooding. Currently, the two closest public coastal tide gauges to Pasco are located in Clearwater Beach and Cedar Key, which are not representative of the timing or flooding heights experienced in Pasco.
This network of sensors will help to aid in local emergency management monitoring and decision-making by collecting long-term data that can be used to understand the timing and duration of flooding events.
Some examples of benefits these sensors can have in the community are:
- Flood Monitoring
- Infrastructure Protection for critical assets
- Emergency Planning
- Future infrastructure planning
Additional benefits
Grants
Funding coastal resiliency projects can be difficult as they can be expensive and in some cases cost taxpayers money. A better option for funding resiliency projects is applying for project grants. These grants can often be used to fund projects that are related to coastal infrastructure, environmental restoration, or flooding adaptation programs. Unfortunately, grants often require evidence or data showing proof that the project areas are experiencing problems that need to be fixed, such as repetitive flooding.
This is where the SECOORA sensors come into play! The long-term and continuous data that these sensors collect can be used to show evidence of flooding height, frequency, location, and source of the coastal flooding (tidal or rainfall). This data can then be used when applying for coastal resiliency grants in Pasco County, helping to fund these programs that help the community and keep the costs off of the taxpayers!
Education
Having access to this data can also help the community to learn more about the local environment and understand the connection between tides, weather, and daily life. Students can use the data for projects and environmental monitoring. One sensor location is at the Pasco County School District Energy and Marine Center. This sensor will be used for student education and understanding of coastal and estuary processes. As the sensor data is also free to the public, anyone can use the data to learn more about the tides and weather near them!
Southeast Water Level Network
These sensors are a part of the SECOORA Southeast Water Level Network funded through the NOAA Integrated Ocean Observing System. The SECOORA team has partnered with many universities and associations throughout the southeast to help install these sensors in coastal communities. For Pasco County, SECOORA partners from Florida Atlantic University have been working with the Pasco County Sea Grant Agent, Dr. Megan Moore, to gain approval for installation sites and deploy the sensors in coastal regions.
Learn more about SECOORA here.
The addition of the sensors in Pasco County will add to the network of ~200 stations throughout the southeast, stretching from the Gulf coast of Florida, through the Atlantic and up to North Carolina. The goal of this sensor network is to enhance localized flood alerts, community resilience, and flood hazard monitoring in the face of storm surges and extreme rainfall.
Each sensor is powered by a solar panel and battery systems. The collected data is transmitted automatically every five minutes to the publicly available websites. The sensors measure tide height, as well as environmental weather conditions such as air temperature, wind speed and direction, rainfall, barometric pressure, and solar radiation.
More sensors to come!
An additional sensors will be installed along the Pasco County Coastline in 2025, adding to the local data network. The addition of these sensors will provide reliable real-time data that can be compared along the Pasco coastline.
Have a question? Ask the Author!
For more detailed information, contact your local University of Florida Extension Office.
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