Close to 26 inches of rain fell in Fort Lauderdale on Wednesday, with most of that falling in just six hours, according to the National Weather Service.
To put that into perspective: “More rain fell at Fort Lauderdale yesterday than we had in the Twin Cities during all of 2022 (22.97″),” the Twin Cities office of the National Weather Service reported on Thursday in a tweet.
How did Fort Lauderdale, Dania Beach and Hollywood become ground-zero for this shocking torrent? “It was an unprecedented event,” said Shawn Bhatti, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Miami.
He said that their preliminary data on Thursday indicated that there were pockets of Fort Lauderdale, stretching from Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport up to Edgewood, Tarpon River, and south of the upper Middle River, that were drenched with 20 to 25.91 inches Wednesday, and the broader metro area was pummeled with 10 to 15 inches of rain.
He said that, incredibly, most of that rain fell in a six-hour period, with some stations reporting up to 20 inches in that time frame. This was on top of several previous days of rain.
Those 24-hour totals have a 1-in-500 chance of happening in any given year, and the six-hour totals have a 1-in-1,000 chance of happening in any given year.
“It was a really unprecedented event,” said Bhatti. “The best way to explain it is that winds steer storms and moisture. In the lower 1-3 km [of the atmosphere] we had east-southeast flow with really good moisture coming off the Atlantic water. Then we had good southerly flow in the mid levels, and above that we had westerly wind.”
He said there was unusually high amounts of moisture stacked high into the atmosphere.
“There was a very deep moisture profile. With atmospheric moisture, we’re not just concerned with moisture at the surface, we’re looking through the whole column of the atmosphere,” which extends 10-11 km in this area.
There was a lot of moisture throughout the column, he said. The boundary layer, near the water surface, was saturated, but that saturation continued up about 3-5 km.
As for the mechanics of the storm, “It’s not like a tropical storm,” he said. “It’s a series of storms that develop within a favorable environment.”
Bhatti warned that today there will be more rain, but it will be more isolated than Wednesday, and along the coast, where the flooding occurred Wednesday. “It’s going to be one of those days where some locations get 2 to 4 inches or rainfall, and other locations don’t get anything.”
The weather service has issued a flood watch through 8 p.m. tonight in the Fort Lauderdale area. Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport announced it would ground all flights until at least 5 a.m. Friday, stranding hundreds of passengers.
Fort Lauderdale and Dania Beach have both declared a state of emergency after the record rainfall that turned roads into rivers and forced drivers to abandon their cars in search of higher ground. Many roads in Fort Lauderdale remained impassable on Thursday morning, city officials said.
Fort Lauderdale sent out this alert Thursday morning: “Please avoid driving, if possible. Never drive through high water. Turn around, don’t drown.”
Doug Thron knew his van couldn’t make it to his home in the Venice Isles neighborhood of Fort Lauderdale due to heavy flooding Wednesday night, so he had an idea. He would trudge through the water on foot and capture what he saw with his drone.
Thron, 53, runs a drone-cleaning company and does professional cinematography with his drones. The drone kept recording as it flew over dozens of cars submerged in water — footage that Thron shared with the South Florida Sun Sentinel on Thursday to show extensive flooding.
“I was blown away with just the magnitude of how many cars in every direction,” he said. “I’ve never seen rain like that before and I’ve traveled all over the world.”
WILD WEATHER: While South Florida reels from torrential rain, Minnesota, Chicago, and Denver are experiencing record-breaking heat and a wildfire is burning in New Jersey. On the other side of the country, California is bracing for more potential disaster posed by the enormous snowfall it received this winter.
Susannah Bryan, David Lyons and Scott Travis contributed to this report, as did the Pioneer Press.
