Roads and flooding on runways at Ft. Lauderdale Airport turned into rivers as more than two feet of rain dumped over Ft. Lauderdale Wednesday.
A state of emergency was issued a day later since most of the area remained underwater.
Fort Lauderdale’s stormwater system was built to handle 3 inches of rain according to city officials. But this storm had a rate of rain that surpassed what the city infrastructure can handle.
It rained for 24 hours at times with rain rates of 3 inches per hour.
The higher than normal tides blocked the drainage thwarting the runoff.
Regardless of the engineering problems, the meteorological setup resulted in an extreme situation uncommon beyond any tropical rain event.
It was a perfect storm where a slow-moving warm front lifted northward sending converging winds of moist air vertical. The lift caused rain as the storm was pinned at the coast as the steering flow collapsed.
Record weather events like these are very difficult to predict when there is no precedent.