S. Florida Rainfall Totals From Eta May Hit 23"; Storm Track Now Looks Like Panhandle/MS By Saturday [View all]

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FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — Tropical Storm Eta was squatting off western Cuba on Tuesday after drifting away from South Florida, where it unleashed a deluge that flooded entire neighborhoods and filled some homes with rising water. The 28th named storm of a record hurricane season was the first this year to make landfall in Florida. And now a 29th named storm has formed over the northern Atlantic: Theta took shape Monday night, eclipsing the record set in 2005, when Hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma struck the Gulf Coast.

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The rain also kept falling Tuesday in South Florida, where as much as 23 inches were expected to accumulate. Eta barely hit land late Sunday as it blew over Lower Matecumbe Key on its way into the Gulf of Mexico, but dumped water over densely populated neighborhoods from Monroe to Palm Beach counties.

People in Florida are very familiar with the heavy tropical rain that falls like clockwork on summer afternoons. This was something else — a 100-year rain event, Fort Lauderdale Mayor Dean Trantalis called it. “Once the ground becomes saturated, there’s really no place for the water to go,” Trantalis said.

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"It’s very bad. In the last 20 years, I've never seen anything like that," said Tito Carvalho, who owns a car stereo business in Fort Lauderdale and estimated the water was 3 feet (about a meter) deep in some places. Some items in his business were damaged from the flooding, he added. Firefighters pulled a person from a car that had driven into a canal Sunday night in Lauderhill, north of Miami. The patient was hospitalized in critical condition, authorities said. And a tractor-trailer was left dangling off the elevated Palmetto Expressway in Miami, the Florida Highway Patrol said, after the driver lost control.

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https://www.startribune.com/florida-cities-mop-up-after-deluge-from-tropical-storm-eta/573024691/

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