Powerful Storm Brings Record Rain and Wind to Florida in Unusual Dry Season Event
A powerful storm unusual for the dry season swept into Florida from the Gulf of Mexico on Saturday night, bringing record-breaking rain, high winds and scattered power outages. The system, which resembled something tropical, wasn’t expected this time of year, a forecaster said Sunday.
“We have areas of low pressure that track off the state all the time outside of hurricane season,” said National Weather Service meteorologist Megan Tollefsen in Melbourne. “[But] it’s probably not what most Floridians are used to because it’s our drier season.”
Saturday’s rainfall broke the daily record for all seven of the NWS official Central Florida tracking stations, she said, including Orlando’s set 110 years ago. Rainfall at Orlando International Airport totaled 2.33 inches, more than doubling the 1913 record for the day of 1.08 inches. Sanford recorded 2.23 inches, an inch more than the old record of 1.23 set in 2007, and Leesburg saw 2.97 inches fall, breaking the record of 1.6 inches established in 1973. Unofficial totals reached up to 5 inches in some parts of the region.
The low-pressure system unleashed a rare non-tropical storm surge to the west coast of the peninsula. Flooding from that surge was reported throughout the Tampa Bay region in coastal and low-lying areas. WINK-TV in Fort Myers reported a surge of 3 feet in that city’s downtown, with several roads closed. The NWS issued a tornado warning for Port Charlotte and Punta Gorda until 3:30 a.m. as the system rapidly moved north.
About 22,000 customers were without power statewide as of 10 a.m., according to poweroutage.us.
The NWS’ hazardous weather outlook said thunderstorms were expected to remain over the ocean as the storm headed up the East Coast on Sunday, but a high risk of rip currents remained on Atlantic beaches and a gale warning was in effect offshore. As far as Central Florida flooding impacts, the St. Johns River at Astor was forecast to briefly rise into moderate flood stage and then fall back to minor flood stage on Monday.
The storm will give way to a front on Monday, with temperatures forecast to fall into the 40s with cold wind chill readings in the upper 30s for parts of north Central Florida on Monday night.