Fort Lauderdale was inundated with a third of its annual rainfall within hours

Throughout the region, residents grappled with the impacts of the record-breaking storm, which sat over Fort Lauderdale and its 300 miles of coastal canals Wednesday. The rain sent water surging through city streets, flooding hundreds of homes and vehicles, damaging critical infrastructure and leaving brackish water to stagnate under Florida’s April sun.

More than a third of the normal annual rainfall in Fort Lauderdale poured down in torrents over 12 hours Wednesday, triggering what meteorologists called a 1-in-1,000-year flood. Several areas received 20 to 25 inches of rain, including 25.91 inches at the airport, according to the National Weather Service’s Miami office. Even Florida’s frequent brushes with tropical storms and hurricanes have never produced as much rain.

Fort Lauderdale’s previous record rainfall for a single day was 14.59 inches, set April 25, 1979; the city averages 3.02 inches of rain during the entire month of April.

“This is worse than any hurricane we have had,” said Fort Lauderdale city commissioner Warren Sturman, who represents the southern part of the city and ticked off names of past storms he’s experienced since moving to the city in 1971. “This flooding here is worse than any thing else we have seen in this area.”

Sturman said the flooding appeared to peak in the neighborhoods that abut Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, the nation’s 15th busiest, where water still covered parts of the runway on Thursday. Officials said the airport would remain closed at least until Friday morning.

Fire and rescue crews from Broward County descended on neighborhoods near the airport Thursday, using boats and high-water rescue vehicles to free residents from their homes. Sturman estimates “at least hundreds and perhaps thousands” of people will need to find temporary shelter due to the flooding in Edgewood, River Oaks and other city neighborhoods closer to downtown skyscrapers, some of which also suffered flood damage.

At a Red Cross shelter in Fort Lauderdale’s Holiday Park, some residents spoke of spending Wednesday night sleeping on mattresses that were “floating” or waterlogged. Many homes in the Edgewood are one-story bungalows and trailers. Residents describe being terrified as 2 to 4 feet of water sloshed into their homes late Wednesday afternoon.

Avalon Conley, 62, who is blind and just moved into his house a week ago, said he noticed water creeping into his residence about 3:30 p.m.

“By 6 o-clock, it was coming through the crest of the door, so I put a towel around it,” Conley added. “And then another hour, it was coming across the living room, and another half-hour, it was trailing into my bedroom.”

Conley said he shouted an epithet and retreated onto his bed, where he fell asleep for about four hours.

“When I woke up, it was at the bottom of my bed,” said Conley, who stepped down into water that was at his knees. “I thought, the power is on. Am I going to get electrocuted? Then I walked into the kitchen and heard the circuit breaker snap off.”

Conley then called 911. Shortly after midnight, a Fort Lauderdale Fire Rescue arrived by boat to ferry him to a nearby shopping plaza, where he and more than 100 slept outdoors until they were rescued again Thursday morning.

On Wednesday evening, 53-year-old Jim Hammond returned home from work and waded through hip-deep water to rescue his 85-year-old mother-in-law, who is also legally blind, and his 98-year-old neighbor.

When Hammond arrived, they were crouched on a table to escape the rising floodwaters. At Hammond’s own house, he found his three dogs huddled on the couch.

“The couch was floating,” Hammond said. “Stuff was floating in the house, and it was the first time in 25 years of living there that we ever saw anything like that.”

Hammond said the storm convinced him that South Florida is “on the front line” of climate change and rising sea levels. “This is something that is real, and something that, if we don’t pay attention to, this is going to happen to all of us,” said Hammond.

Meteorologists and elected officials say a variety of factors contributed to the severity of the flooding.

Visualizing the record-breaking rain in Fort Lauderdale

Alex Lamers, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service, in a tweet compared the situation to “putting a faucet right over Fort Lauderdale, turning it on, and walking away.” Greg Carbin, chief of forecast operations at the agency’s Weather Prediction Center, likened the setup to a chimney of moisture being continually replenished.

Research on other storms has demonstrated the link between climate change and rainfall intensity. Meteorologists said study of the Fort Lauderdale storm was likely to show a similar global warming influence, increasing the temperature and moisture of ocean air and thus providing a beefed-up source of storm fuel.

“It was a phenomenal event,” Carbin said.

Helping to intensify the storm is the rise in average temperatures across the globe — because the atmosphere can hold about 4 percent more moisture for every 1 degree Fahrenheit increase in temperature, said Kenneth Kunkel, a research professor at North Carolina State University.

The air off Florida’s coast is capable of producing heavy downpours even under the most typical of circumstances, but on Wednesday, rainfall intensity probably was helped by the fact that ocean temperatures are 2 to 3 degrees above normal for this time of year, Kunkel said.

While it would take further research to nail down the influence of climate change, he said it’s safe to assume it played a role: “This is fairly straightforward physics we’re talking about.”

Despite the rain’s intensity, no injuries or deaths were immediately reported.

Farther south, Miami proper saw about 3 to 5 inches of rain — still significant, but barely a quarter of what fell just a half-hour’s drive to the north. But Miami experienced extensive street flooding earlier in the week, highlighting its own vulnerability to heavy rain.

At a new conference, Trantalis pushed back on questions about whether was Fort Lauderdale was adequately prepared for the storm, saying “no city can prepare for this.” He added that Fort Lauderdale is spending about $200 million to bolster the city’s defenses against rising sea levels, but “no weather forecaster could have warned” that so much rain would fall in such a short period of time.

Still, throughout the city, there were signs of just how susceptible Fort Lauderdale is during major storms. Though the bulk of the rain Wednesday fell at low tide, which theoretically makes it easier for the water to drain into the ocean, Sturman said it is likely to take days for the water to fully recede.

“There is no place to pump it to,” he said. “There is water all around you. You can’t just pump it from the water in front of you, to the water in back of you.”

On Thursday, the Henry E. Kinney Tunnel on Route 1, a major thoroughfare that carries traffic under the New River that bisects the city, remained closed after it filled with water. Flooding also knocked out the power supply to Fort Lauderdale’s city hall building. The streets appeared apocalyptic on Thursday as mud and abandoned vehicles littered even some of the city’s busiest thoroughfares.

Douglas Thron of Fort Lauderdale, whose car was stuck in knee-deep water at an intersection near the First Baptist Fort Lauderdale church, said he was planning to leave his car and walk home two miles away. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” the 53-year-old said.

Carbin said the center’s modeling suggested the remote possibility of such an extreme amount of rainfall, but that it’s especially challenging to pinpoint where such an event could occur. That makes it difficult to incorporate into local forecasts.

“It’s a matter of a dozen blocks on a city map,” Carbin said. “Right now that’s beyond the capability of what we have available to do the forecasting.”

After his family spent the night huddled on their mattresses before being rescued Thursday afternoon, Robert Mercado blamed overdevelopment for much of the flooding. As he looked up at recently built apartment towers in Downtown Fort Lauderdale, Mercado, 50, said the city’s sewage and water management systems simply cannot handle all of the new construction.

“This is a gigantic city of Fort Lauderdale fail,” he said.

Trantalis, the mayor, countered “development does not impact storm water drainage.”

“These issues existed long before rapid development found its way to our city,” he said.

But as Conley prepared to spend Thursday night in the Red Cross shelter, he said he’s ready to move to another state.

“When my lease is up, I am out of here,” said Conley, noting he has lived in South Florida his entire life. “I already know where this is going, and I think Florida is going to be underwater.”

Dance and Cappucci reported from Washington, Jeong from Seoul. Jason Samenow in Washington contributed to this report.