The downpour that left roads flooded and growing numbers of people stranded throughout Broward and Miami-Dade counties on Wednesday may continue through the work week, forecasters warned.
Though the rain may taper off slightly overnight, “there is potential we could see this amount again tomorrow and again Friday,” Barry Baxter, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service Miami, said Wednesday evening.
The flooding across South Florida was already extremely rare and severe, leading the weather service to issue a flash flood emergency, the most urgent type of warning possible. The last time such a warning was issued was during last year’s devastating April storm. It is reserved for the most dire situations in which highways are shut down and flooded roads are strewn with cars, all of which took place then and again on Wednesday.
The emergency is “issued for the EXCEEDINGLY RARE situations when extremely heavy rain is leading to a severe threat to human life and CATASTROPHIC DAMAGE from a flash flood is happening or will happen soon,” according to the weather service website.
The downpour is caused by a trough between two potential systems with chances of forming in the Gulf of Mexico and in the northwest waters of the Atlantic, Baxter said. Though neither system would directly affect South Florida, the trough connecting them causes deep moisture in the atmosphere.
“That’s gonna sit over us tomorrow and Friday,” Baxter said. “It’s not gonna budge much.”
The already saturated ground will also make the chances of flooding even more likely.
Friday may be slightly drier than Thursday but not by much, depending on how quickly the trough weakens. Saturday and Sunday still both have a 70% chance of rain.