Florida was hit with record-breaking rain last night, with the entire southern part of the state under a flood watch through Thursday evening.
Cities like Miami and Fort Lauderdale experienced the heaviest downpour of the year yesterday between 5pm and 8pm, and almost 4in of rain fell in Sarasota in a single hour.
“That’s the most ever in an hour,” David Parkinson, senior weather producer at CBS, said on Wednesday.
The Tampa Bay area saw 8in of rainfall in just three hours. This extreme precipitation is so rare for the region, it’s only anticipated once every 500 to 1,000 years. Heavy showers and thunderstorms have resulted in periods of flash flooding across southern Florida, leaving cars submerged in the streets and causing flight cancellations.
At the Miami international airport, there were more than 450 delays and 50 cancellations, while at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood international airport, there were more than 330 delays and a handful of cancellations, according to NBC Miami
