Heavy deluge swamps South Florida roads and overflows sewage systems

Environment admin September 23, 2026 0 Comments

Heavy deluge swamps South Florida roads and overflows sewage systems

A deluge hit South Florida this week, submerging cars, swamping roads and overflowing sewage systems.

By Wednesday morning, some spots had already seen double-digit rainfall in the last five days: 10 inches for North Miami Beach and Lighthouse Point in Broward, according to preliminary data from the National Weather Service.

Read more: Miami’s weekend forecast has changed. When will all of this rain end?

NWS Miami says the worst is over, but a little more rain is on the way. Sammy Hadi, chief meteorologist at NWS Miami, said his office has issued a smattering of street flood advisories and flash flood warning in the last week, including a flash flood warning Wednesday morning in Broward.

Hadi said they didn’t issue a flood watch because the rainfall was so localized — one spot might have seen 1 inch of rain, but the neighborhood next door saw 5 inches. The hardest hit spots were Fort Lauderdale, North Miami and Homestead. NWS has heard reports of flooded streets and cars in those locations, but no property damage.

“As far as water getting intro structures,” he said. “That level of flooding has not been seen.”

The water was deep enough to swamp cars in some spots, including at least one person in North Lauderdale who called 911 Monday evening as water poured into their car, per NWS reports.

In Fort Lauderdale, where the disastrous 2023 floods are still a recent memory, the city deployed four stormwater pumps to keep streets dry, as well as its fleet of vactor trucks, which are used to slurp up floodwater or clean out clogged stormwater drains.

The city saw a maximum of about 8 inches of rain in the last five days, per the NWS, but it was spread out enough to avoid flooding the trouble spots in the city, said city spokesperson Ashley Doussard.

Most of the city’s roads are designed to handle about 3 inches of rain in a day, she said. The fixed-up spots, including some of the hardest hit in previous floods, can now handle from 7 to 10 inches in a single day.

“We finished four to five projects in those hard-hit neighborhoods that were flooded in 2023,” she said. “We’re seeing positive results in those areas.”

Swamped sewer systems

But the biggest issue from this week’s rainfall might have been the sewage overflowing into streets and waterways.

Multiple cities in Broward County reported rain overwhelming their sewage systems. Lighthouse Point reported one sewage overflow on Monday, and Wilton Manors saw two overflows on Thursday after 3.5 inches of rain fell in a short window, spilling human waste into the Middle River.

“Heavy rain events coupled with high tides exceeded the capacity off our sanitary sewer system creating an overflow of untreated raw sewage from a manhole. The overflow impacted storm drains that discharge into a waterbody,” the city reported to the state’s pollution database.

Extreme rain overwhelming the sewer system is not a rare problem in South Florida. Miami-Dade alone is on a multi-billion-dolla mission to fix its sewage system after getting slapped by the state for a “high number” of spills.

READ MORE: Why should you stop frolicking in Miami-Dade floodwater? It’s probably full of poop

Wilton Manors is cleaning up its act too, said city spokesperson Aimee Adler Cooke.

“The City is actively investing in improvements to increase the capacity and reliability of its wastewater infrastructure and reduce the potential for future overflows,” she said in a statement. “The City has also initiated a comprehensive Inflow and Infiltration (I&I) Study to identify areas where groundwater and stormwater may be entering the sanitary sewer collection system and contributing unnecessary flow during wet-weather events.”

This story was originally published September 23, 2026 at 2:49 PM.