South Florida spent the weekend wading through saltwater as unusually high king tides submerged streets across Broward and Miami-Dade counties, breaking a recent Fort Lauderdale flooding record and prompting a coastal flood advisory. Fort Lauderdale police shut down two miles of major highway A1A because of the flooding, while the Hollywood Broadwalk sat under several inches of saltwater and floodwaters crept nearly to street level along Collins Avenue in Miami Beach.
Weekend High Tide Breaks Records
The ocean flooded urban coastal cities from Saturday evening through Sunday morning’s high tide, according to the Miami Herald. Sunday morning’s high tide brought the highest water level of the recent flooding, and Broward’s Port Everglades tide station recorded its highest flooding since the station was installed in 2018 — a mark that surpassed the flooding recorded during Hurricane Nicole in 2022, per the same account. Miami’s Virginia Key station ranked the weekend’s flooding fourth among its own recorded events, well behind the Miami high-water mark set during Hurricane Irma in 2017.
High tide measured about 2 feet above the normal high tide at both the Port Everglades and Virginia Key stations, the Herald reported. Still, the flooding remained below the 2.5-foot threshold that meteorologists classify as major flooding. National Weather Service Miami meteorologist Robert Molleda described the event as above-average but said he had not heard of water seeping into homes or businesses.
Traffic Snarled Across Two Counties
Beyond the closed stretch of A1A, the flooding disrupted traffic more broadly across Broward and Miami-Dade counties. In Miami, a Waymo backed up on Northeast 15th Street to avoid floodwaters, illustrating just how widespread the standing water became even away from the coastline, per the same report.
Weeks of heavy rain compounded the seasonal tides, leaving streets submerged well beyond the immediate shoreline. The city of Hollywood, which sits at the center of some of the worst-hit blocks, describes itself as especially exposed to this kind of event: with seven miles of shoreline, 7.9 miles of canals and flat topography, according to the City of Hollywood, the city is vulnerable to the effects of sea level rise and tidal flooding. The city notes that these seasonal high tides, combined with rising sea levels and inclement weather conditions, exacerbate flooding risks.
Hollywood Tests New Storm Panels
Hollywood used this same king tide window to put new flood defenses through their paces. As part of its ongoing Hollywood Tidal Flooding Mitigation Project, the city’s contractor installed removable storm panels at seawall openings along South Lake Drive this past Thursday, the city announced. City staff, project designer Cummins Cederberg, and contractor The Whiting-Turner Contracting Company are inspecting and documenting the performance of the storm panel system during the king tide period running from Thursday through October 1.
The city says the testing is part of the ongoing construction process and will help the project team evaluate the system’s performance, advance the project toward completion, and prepare city staff for future operation of the flood gate system. It’s a small-scale trial run for infrastructure the city hopes will hold back exactly the kind of tidal surge that swamped the Broadwalk this weekend.
More Flooding Expected This Week and Beyond
The respite may be brief. Floodwaters were expected to recede by midday Sunday as the tide ebbed and the sun dried puddles, but forecasters said the water would return around the next high tide at 9:30 p.m. Sunday, and Monday was expected to bring more flooding during the 9:30 a.m. high tide. The king tide itself was expected to continue through Monday before conditions ease back toward normal by around Saturday, per the Herald’s reporting.
National Weather Service Miami forecast little rain for the following two days, offering some relief, though rain was expected to return by the middle of next week. Molleda said tides would hopefully fall as rainfall chances increased. Unusually high tides, also called king tides, are expected periodically through December, according to the City of Hollywood, and three more king tide periods are expected before the year is out: October 22 through November 12, November 22 through November 29, and December 22 through December 27.
The next round is forecast to be the highest of the year, according to the Herald. King tides are the highest annual tides, driven by the gravitational pull of the sun and moon, and South Florida officials have noted that sea levels have already risen 8 inches over the past 30 years, with roughly another foot of rise expected by around 2050.
