Tampa Bay & Pinellas
St. Petersburg Water Temperature
Tampa Bay flats, the Skyway, and the longest fishing pier in the world.
That is about 5°F warmer than average for this time of year, and cooling over the last two weeks. The October average here is 79°F.
Updated Friday, October 2 — sea-surface temperature modeled for St. Petersburg by Open-Meteo.
Out in the open Gulf, NOAA buoy 42098 — 22 miles offshore — is reading 84°F. Deep water offshore runs cooler than the shallows in summer and warmer in winter, so it won't match the beach.
For swimming
Very warm
Bath-warm. Pleasant, though it stops being much relief from the heat of the day.
For fishing
Hot — fish the edges of the day
Early and late is the play. Through the middle of the day fish drop into deeper channels and passes where there's moving water and more oxygen.
The last two weeks
Daily average sea-surface temperature, °F.
St. Petersburg water temperature by month
Averaged from 3 years of daily sea-surface temperature (2023–2025). The range column is the coolest and warmest daily average recorded in that month over the period — a guide to how much any given year can differ, not a record high and low.
| Month | Average | Range | Swimming |
|---|---|---|---|
| January | 61°F | 54–67°F | Bracing |
| February | 66°F | 61–74°F | Bracing |
| March | 72°F | 67–77°F | Cool but comfortable |
| April | 76°F | 73–80°F | Warm |
| May | 83°F | 77–88°F | Very warm |
| June | 86°F | 82–88°F | Very warm |
| July | 89°F | 86–90°F | Bath water |
| August | 89°F | 85–92°F | Bath water |
| September | 86°F | 83–88°F | Very warm |
| Octobernow | 79°F | 74–86°F | Warm |
| November | 73°F | 67–78°F | Cool but comfortable |
| December | 66°F | 62–71°F | Bracing |
Warmest on average in July at 89°F; coolest in January at 61°F.
The water at St. Petersburg
St. Petersburg sits on a peninsula with Tampa Bay on one side and Boca Ciega on the other, which puts an enormous amount of fishable water inside twenty minutes of downtown. The old Sunshine Skyway approaches are now the Skyway Fishing Pier, giving bank anglers access to deep bay water where kingfish, grouper, and tarpon genuinely swim past. Big trout hold the deep grass, snook and redfish work the mangrove shorelines and seawalls, and the spring tarpon migration stages along the ship channel and the bridges. Waterfront parks, the pier district, and the Pinellas Trail running up the county make this a walking and riding town too. Summer afternoons bring the classic Tampa Bay thunderstorm — this is the lightning capital of the country, and that is not a joke.
Tampa Bay & the Skyway
What moves the water temperature here
The Gulf shelf off this coast is shallow, which is why the water swings so much more between summer and winter than open ocean at the same latitude does. Shallow water heats fast and gives that heat up fast: a single strong winter cold front can pull the inshore bays several degrees down in a couple of days, while the beaches a mile offshore barely move. Wind direction matters too — a sustained offshore breeze can pull cooler water up from below and drop the beach temperature noticeably in a morning.
Inshore bays, canals and flats run warmer than the beach through the summer and colder through the winter, for the same reason. The reading above is for the open water at St. Petersburg; expect the back bays to be a few degrees either side of it depending on the season.
Common questions
- What is the water temperature at St. Petersburg right now?
- The water at St. Petersburg is currently about 84°F (29°C). The October average here is 79°F.
- Is the water warm enough to swim at St. Petersburg in October?
- October averages 79°F at St. Petersburg, which most people would call warm. About as good as it gets — warm enough to stay in for hours without getting chilled.
- When is the water warmest at St. Petersburg?
- July is the warmest month on average at 89°F, and January the coolest at 61°F. 7 months of the year average 75°F or above.
- Why does the water temperature change so quickly here?
- The Gulf shelf off this coast is shallow, so it heats and cools far faster than deep open ocean. A strong winter cold front can pull the inshore water down several degrees in a couple of days, and a sustained offshore wind can drop beach temperatures in a single morning by pulling cooler water up from below.