Florida isn't called the Sunshine State for nothing.
As America's southernmost state, Florida receives an average of 230 sunny days per year (Alaska, by comparison, only sees 61 clear days annually). But take a trip down to Florida this April and you may start to wonder whether you'd accidentally boarded the wrong flight to Anchorage.
DON'T MISS: Florida's Latest Tourism Problem Is Twice the Width of the United States
That's because Florida is currently seeing near-unprecedented rainfall in its greater Fort Lauderdale region. On Wednesday, a supercell thunderstorm blew through the state, bringing heavy rainfall and flooding along with it. Some areas saw as much as three inches of rain per hour. Fort Lauderdale got up to two feet of rain in total.
“You had this extreme warmth and moisture that was just feeding into the cell and because it had a bit of a spin to it, it was essentially acting like a vacuum and sucking all that moisture back up into the main core of the system,” meteorologist Steve Bowen told the AP. “It just kept reigniting itself, essentially.”
Prior to this system blowing through, Florida had been in a serious drought, which caused dozens of wildfires in the state. Some areas remain under an "extreme drought" watch, including the greater Naples area on the western part of the peninsula.
Florida Sees Extreme Flooding
Even Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport had to shut down due to the heavy rainfall. Its tarmac had been flooding and some departures were delayed up to three hours.
The airport has since reopened as of Friday at 9 a.m. but the area is still expecting thunderstorms into Friday evening.
Meteorologist Ana Torres-Vazquez likened the total rainfall to hurricanes, saying the chance of this total rainfall happening around this time of the year was around 0.1%. She calls it a “1-in-1,000 year event, or greater."
"This amount of rain in a 24-hour period is incredibly rare for South Florida," she said.
Broward county declared a state of emergency on Thursday, and 600 people in the surrounding area had taken shelter in emergency facilities.
Westway Towing VP Darren Wells said the company had responded to countless calls for towing assistance too, adding at least 35 Teslas were "dead in the water," with some submerged up to their sunroofs.
“One guy was like, ‘Dude, I didn’t even know a storm was coming,’” Wells said. “‘I’m eating dinner and all of a sudden it was like the ocean was on Las Olas Boulevard.’”
