Hurricane Harvey: What If It Happened In South Florida?
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MIAMI (CBSMiami) – What if South Florida was deluged with rain totals left by Hurricane Harvey?
Harvey broke the record for the most rainfall from a single storm in the continental U.S. The city of Cedar Bayou, Texas recorded 51.88 inches of rain, which is slightly under the 52-inch U.S. record set in Hawaii.
The largest 3 day rainfall total in SE Florida is 26.03 inches at Fort Lauderdale Beach ending on October 15th, 1965. So roughly half of what the high mark near Houston was.
Based on the record-setting 50-inch totals in Texas, the Washington Post created an interactive feature that allows users to make comparisons in their own neighborhood.
According to that interactive map, Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens would be swamped with 5.5 feet of water. Miami International would be inundated with 4.4 feet of water and Fort Lauderdale Hollywood International Airport would be flooded with 3.7 feet.
Here is a sampling of other South Florida locations:
- South Beach: 4.5 feet deep
- Marlins Park: 4.5 feet deep
- Zoo Miami: 4.4. feet deep
- American Airlines Arena: 5.1 feet deep
- Davie: 4.6 feet deep
- Weston: 4.7 feet deep
- Homestead Air Reserve Base: 4.3 feet deep
- Downtown Miami: 5.1 feet deep
- Las Olas Boulevard: 4.2 feet deep
Here's another way to look at it if a storm like Harvey were to strike South Florida.
A mySA.com analysis shows Harvey would engulf half of Florida.
MySA.com created a 'storm footprint' to provide a visual representation. Using images of Harvey's weekend rainfall totals provided by the National Weather Service to show the storm's Texas footprint and online mapping tool MAPfrappe, they created maps of different states to imagine what Harvey's footprint would look like in other areas of the United States.