Florida's Freak Flooding Sees Water Levels Reach Alarming Record

Storm surge flooding reached alarming levels across Florida, as an intense storm hit the state before barreling up the East Coast.

Early Monday, the tide reached 8.31 feet in Apalachicola on the Gulf of Mexico, according to tide gauge data, briefly putting the area in a major flood stage. On Sunday, the storm brought surges—rises in water level above usually dry land—of between 3 feet and 3.5 feet in coastal areas around Tampa Bay, near the peaks seen when Hurricane Idalia hit the state in August.

Videos on social media show streets submerged in water, and flood warnings for a large swath of the state remain in effect.

"Storm surge flooding from non-tropical winter storms is rare in Florida," meteorologist Bryan Bennett noted in a post on X, formerly Twitter. He added that it has only occurred six times in the past 40 years in the state.

In Tampa, observed water levels peaked at 3.29 feet on Sunday—the fourth-highest level on record, Bennett noted in another post. Idalia peaked at 4.18 feet in August.

Surge flooding in Clearwater Beach was the fifth highest on record, peaking at 3.43 feet early on Sunday. "That is only a few inches lower than 3.86 ft peak recorded with Hurricane Idalia," Bennett wrote.

St. Petersburg saw surge flooding reach the sixth-highest level on record, Bennett said, with the sea water height hitting 3.2 feet at one point, just about six inches shy of the peak recorded with Idalia.

As the storm moved up the coast and caused serious flooding in South Carolina, Charleston Harbor recorded a maximum tide of 9.86 feet on Sunday. The level was the fourth-highest tide on record and "well above the highest tide for a non-tropical system," the National Weather Service (NWS) wrote on X.

Meteorologist Jeff Masters, co-founder of the Weather Underground, told The Associated Press that rising sea levels driven by human-caused climate change mean that even relatively weak weather systems can now produce storm surges previously associated with hurricanes.

"In Charleston, this is the sixth time this year already that they've had a major coastal flood," he said. "Most of those would not have been major flooding 100 years ago, because the sea level has risen that much."

Forecasters said the "powerful" storm was moving north across New England on Monday, producing heavy rain and strong winds.

"The associated heavy rain will create mainly localized areas of flash flooding, with urban areas, roads, and small streams the most vulnerable," the NWS said.

"In addition, the storm will produce showers and thunderstorms over the northern Mid-Atlantic Coast/southern New England Coast. The threat of heavy rain ends on Tuesday as the system moves farther into Canada."