Meteorologist On Fort Lauderdale Airport Flooding: 'I Have Never Seen That From A Rain Event'

Now planes don't normally belong in the water, we all know that's safe and the Fort Lauderdale

airport

flooded that screech to stop travel because that was the reality. I mean, we're still waiting for the

airport

to reopen this morning, yeah, pilot. and

meteorologist

Dave JP says he joins us now JP it's always a pleasure to see you as

meteorologist

s. I know he is surprised by the total

rain

. I mean, this was totally unprecedented. 25 inches. You know in just a matter of almost 12 hours. How strange it is. It's seeing an airport underwater like this, you know, other than a land after a hurricane.

I've

never

seen

that in a

rain

event

, so yes, it's very rare to

have

an airport closed for a significant period of time due to heavy rain. rain and

flooding

at this airport, it's not just that the runways are wet, the airport is in a

flooding

situation like much of Fort Lauderdale has been experiencing, so with the reopening of the airport we

have

had a couple of cancellations that they expected by lunchtime yesterday and that it won't It won't happen, hoping that at five in the morning that hasn't happened, so the next waypoint will arrive in about an hour and a half or so, when this period of time finally reaches us.

JP Says, what's the process here? What do they have to look at to say? Okay, we can open it. We are ready to go. You don't want excess standing water on a track. It is perfectly fine to take off and land on a wet runway. We do it all. the weather and there's a big difference between a flooded airport and a wet runway uh and one of the problems you face with wet runways you're worried about hydroplaning you have the breakup effectiveness of the plane the ability to stop on the runway those are the big elements. you're looking for, but again, that's mainly when you're looking at a wet or contaminated runway, not a flooded runway, so they're going to have to get the water.

Basically, it doesn't have to be dry, but it doesn't have to be covered in water, we are talking about airline planes and not seaplanes that will operate from that airport. Yeah, I mean, you also talk about the cancellations that have piled up in Fort Lauderdale, over 600, I think. latest look, what will it take for airlines to truly recover operations? I mean, today, even if we open at nine o'clock, expecting the delays to continue at least through the weekend, sure, yeah, it's going to be a popular area of ​​South Florida and a lot of people as an alternative to going to Florida International Airport.

Miami, which often goes to Fort Lauderdale, is now probably the other way around. I needed to get to Fort Lauderdale, so I'm using an alternate airport on my trip. plans like Miami or probably up north in Palm Beach, on top of that, on top of the airport singing so much flooding, South Florida has been dealing with a lot of rain storms and that in itself has slowed things down even in some of the other airports. and out of Palm Beach in particular I used to fly in and out of that airport all the time and if it rained a lot and there were thunderstorms there, at certain times of the day I could really back up that airport, uh, big time, you know, looking out go ahead and by the way jpu We just heard that the airports tweeted that they will open at 9am ET so it's good to see that information coming here at Fox Weather but we're looking forward to it how can you Prepare for something like this? no one would have expected 25 inches of rain in 24 hours, especially not with a tropical storm.

I mean, the last time I remembered the airport flooding was during Harvey. I mean, I remember how it looked at Houston Hobby and nothing was happening. It's been there for quite some time now, but you know, is there any way for airports to prepare for these extreme

event

s, not of that magnitude? In the case of Houston, it is a very low-lying area that City Harris County itself tends to flood with. tropical systems uh you can't really handle a situation like this because of so much water in such a short period of time, it's a lot easier for airports to handle uh, you know, particularly in the northeast and the midwest, the big ones snowfall and things like at least you can, you can remove that, you can clean the water off of The Runaways, it's not that easy, there are drainage systems in place, but it overwhelms them, uh, when you have 25 inches of rain and a 12 hour period Fortunately, this is considered a 1,000-year flood is not something that happens all the time, either a rare event like this occurs or it is due to a tropical system hitting the land and either way there probably won't be any. a lot of air travel at that time, yeah, well, Meet JP.

I'm sure you'd give the same advice when tweeting at the airport. Please check in with your airline before arriving at the airport this morning. I'm Amy Freeze. Welcome to the Fox Weather YouTube page. We have more great videos on the way so stay tuned. Subscribe to stay up to date on all things weather