02:35 Most Dangerous Hurricane Cities: Tampa The Weather Channel senior hurricane specialist Bryan Norcross takes a look the hurricane threat in Tampa.

A new study has found a worst-case hurricane scenario will eventually play out in Tampa, Florida, and it's not a matter of "if," but "when."

The findings, published Monday in the science journal Nature, define this phenomenon as a "grey swan." It plays on the famed "black swan theory," which refers to a scientific discovery that's an outlier with an extreme impact, and the discovery makes us believe in hindsight that we should have known about it all along , the New York Times explains.

<img class="styles__noscript__2rw2y" src="https://dsx.weather.com//util/image/w/tampa_etm_2000306_lrg.jpg?v=at&w=485&h=273&api=7db9fe61-7414-47b5-9871-e17d87b8b6a0" srcset="https://dsx.weather.com//util/image/w/tampa_etm_2000306_lrg.jpg?v=at&w=485&h=273&api=7db9fe61-7414-47b5-9871-e17d87b8b6a0 400w, https://dsx.weather.com//util/image/w/tampa_etm_2000306_lrg.jpg?v=ap&w=980&h=551&api=7db9fe61-7414-47b5-9871-e17d87b8b6a0 800w" > Pictured is the Tampa Bay area. (NASA Photo) (NASA Photo)

In this case, the study says, if and when a massive hurricane hits Tampa Bay, we might not have a full grasp of the devastation it will cause, but we'll know such an event is possible.

"The Tampa Bay Area was No. 1 on our list of America's most vulnerable hurricane cities because of the threat there today, let alone when sea level is higher later this century," said Bryan Norcross , hurricane specialist for The Weather Channel referring to sea-level rise predictions from climate change. "Tampa Bay is like a catcher's mitt for storm surge. It's easy to imagine a north- to northeast-moving hurricane pushing Gulf water into the bay, submerging thousands of homes and businesses in surging water. It doesn't matter if the storm surge at the top of Tampa Bay is 15 feet, as it was in the great hurricane of 1848, or 25 feet in some giant storm in the future. For people caught in it, it will be unsurvivable."

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Two other areas were named in the study as potential targets for "grey swan" hurricanes: the Persian Gulf, where a hurricane has never been observed in recorded history, and Cairns, Australia.

Climate Central mentions that none of the biggest tropical systems of recent memory qualify as a "grey swan" – not Sandy or Katrina; neither Super Typhoon Haiyan, which devastated parts of the Philippines, nor Andrew. The kind of impacts we'd see from a "grey swan" would be several times worse than even a 10,000-year storm, the study found.

The co-authors of the study, MIT's Kerry Emanuel and Princeton's Ning Lin, came to their conclusions after running computer simulations of a worst-case scenario storm for each area. The reason for the study, Emanuel explained to the Washington Post, was to "raise awareness of what a very low probability , very high impact hurricane event might look like."

And although the study may send shock waves through the cities mentioned, experts maintain that those aren't the only places where a major disaster could happen.

"It's much more important to focus on what could happen this year or next than it is to worry about a mega storm of the future, 'grey swan' or otherwise," said Norcross. "Numerous cities in the U.S. and around the world are frighteningly vulnerable to the storms that Mother Nature can conjure up with the ingredients available today."

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