Downtown Tampa, Florida Live Cam

Downtown Tampa stands where the Hillsborough River reaches the bay, on the Gulf coast side of the Florida peninsula. The webcam looks over the towers and the water from a building in the centre.

Tampa Bay is the largest open-water estuary in the state, shallow enough that shipping keeps to dredged channels. The city grew on cigars: Ybor City, a mile north-east, rolled tobacco brought in from Cuba and employed thousands at it into the 1930s.

This is also the part of the United States struck by lightning most often. Sea breezes off the Gulf and off the bay meet over the city on summer afternoons and set off storms almost daily from June to September.