Massive Rain Storm Floods Fort Lauderdale, Leaving Cars Stranded in the Streets

Screenshot: YouTube/Douglas Thron

Rain can be annoying, especially if you’re on a motorcycle, but it’s usually no big deal. We need it to keep the plants alive. What Fort Lauderdale, Florida is dealing with is nothing short of a disaster. Yesterday, the city got 26 inches of rain, with most of it falling in a mere seven hours, reports the South Florida Sun Sentinel. It had also already been raining for several days prior.

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Once the total is officially confirmed, it’s going to break Florida’s all-time record for rainfall in a 24-hour period. And it may break a national record, too. “It appears that about 1.5 inches of rain occurred in 10 minutes in Fort Lauderdale — which is close to the United States all-time record for rain in that short period of time,” AccuWeather Chief Meteorologist Jonathan Porter told the Sun Sentinel.

In fact, the rain was so heavy, it cut visibility at the Fort Lauderdale airport to near-blizzard-like levels. “Multiple times during Wednesday afternoon [the visibility] was 1/8 of a mile — the type of low-visibility report that is typical in cases when very heavy snowfall is occurring and rarely reported with rainfall,” said Porter.

As a result of all that rainfall, large parts of Fort Lauderdale have flooded, although, thankfully, there have been no deaths reported. But people have reportedly been trapped inside their homes, and many had to abandon their cars in the middle of the street once the flood waters got too high. One drone operator was able to capture the carnage and posted it on YouTube.

At one point, we paused the video and counted nearly 50 cars on screen at the same time. It’s absolutely crazy. Hopefully, the flood waters start to recede quickly, but even if they do, so much damage has already been done that it’s going to take a long time for Fort Lauderdale to recover.

Downtown Fort Lauderdale flooding drone video by Douglas Thron