That was some storm. Florida Keys drying out from Sally’s heavy rain and flooding
The Florida Keys continued to dry out Monday from heavy flooding up and down the island chain from the weekend’s tropical storm that has moved into the Gulf of Mexico as Hurricane Sally.
Duval Street in Key West is usually busy with tourists, but over the weekend, business owners raced to place sandbags at their entrances to keep water from seeping inside. The Southernmost City got more than 11 inches of rain, according to the National Weather Service.
People mopped up Sunday and Monday from rain that never seemed to end on Saturday. Water got into some homes and businesses and made wakes as they traversed flooded streets.
Fausto’s grocery on White Street was closed Sunday so employees could clean up after the storm.
“It flooded and we had to squeegee it out,” said owner Jimmy Weekley, who is also a Key West city commissioner. “The floor was still damp so they had to put these fans in there to dry out the floors.”
The Fleming Street location was fine, Weekley said.
The leaky roof at the Key West Wildlife Center, located in midtown Key West, brought in plenty of water. But on Monday, the building was still functional. The center closed to the public Monday because of standing water out front.
“We had garbage cans full of water but we still have a roof,” said Peggy Coontz, animal care director at the center “Thankfully, it wasn’t anything outrageous. It was just a little shocking. We knew our roof was bad. We still have a ceiling. I’m not sure how.”
The four-island Village of Islamorada in the Upper Keys was hit hard. The area received almost a foot of rain. That’s more than Islamorada usually gets during a hurricane.
Things were so bad that Islamorada leaders asked residents to limit flushing their toilets, bathing and washing laundry because they were concerned the storm was overwhelming the central sewer system.
“Whenever heavy rainfall occurs, the village central wastewater collection and transmission system experiences intrusion and inundation, which can be detrimental to system operations,” read an email to residents Saturday night.
By late Sunday night, the village released a statement that all issues with the system had been resolved.
Gerald and Frances Goigitzer just moved from Broward County to an oceanfront home along the Old Highway in Islamorada three weeks ago. They were in the process of renovating the yard before the storm hit, with the arrival of a shipment of topsoil. But by Monday, they realized they’ll have to start again.
“It all washed away,” said Gerald Goigitzer, 54.
But that was the least of the damage. The roof of the home — the original structure dates back to 1937 — leaked during the 12 hours of continuous downpour, and their yard was underwater.
The Old Highway, which was the original main highway in the Keys that ran from Key Largo to Lower Matecumbe Key, runs several feet below and parallel to U.S. 1. The flooding almost reached U.S. 1, Goigitzer said.
“This was our first experience as far as a heavy rain event is concerned,” he said. “It was an eye-opening experience.”
Now that the water is gone, he said the road is covered in trash — floating garbage cans and branches, grass and other yard debris.
“It’s just a mess out there right now,” Goigitzer said.
Key Largo, the northernmost Key, also got a deluge, but not as much rain as the other islands. Andy Haner, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Key West, said accumulations ran from around 4 1/2 inches on the low end to more than 5 inches.
Residents in Stillwright Point, a low-lying bayside neighborhood at the northern end of Key Largo, had flooded streets, but at least it was rainwater this time, not the corrosive saltwater that comes with king tides that plague the subdivision every fall, sometimes for months.
“Ours flooded, but we’re used to it. We didn’t even take photos,” said Nada Khalaf-Jones, a photographer and videographer who lives in Stillwright Point with her husband, Joe, and their children.
Haner said residents there should be getting their first taste of king tides this week. Last year’s event was the worst in recent memory, lasting from early September well into November. That was due to the cumulative effect of three slow-moving hurricanes that hung around the northeastern Atlantic Ocean, which disrupted the Gulfstream and sent “a pretty incredible amount of water” into the Florida Bay,” Haner said.
There was nowhere for it to go until cold fronts moved in late November, which pushed it out into the ocean and Gulf of Mexico around the Middle Keys city of Marathon.
During that entire time, many residents were stuck in their homes because driving through the saltwater is subjecting a car to a slow death. Only those with high-riding pickup trucks and Jeeps could make it through the water, and their owners developed a system for washing the undersides of their vehicles by parking overtop rotating sprinklers in their driveways.
Haner said it’s too soon to say how long this year’s king tides will last.
Jan Darden, another Stillwright Point resident, said the water on her street is starting to recede after this weekend’s rain, but she and her neighbors, remembering last year, are bracing for the worst.
“We’ll see the next few days.”
An earlier version of this story contained a photograph of a man holding guitars above a flooded street that was not taken in the Keys.
This story was originally published September 14, 2020 at 2:54 PM.
