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| Flooding in McCaysville, Georgia last week. A string of flood disaster over the past month from California to Florida is just the beginning of what is shaping up to be a horrifically destructive Super El Nino winter. |
Coastal areas, especially in California, are cleaning up after record sea levels flooded hundreds if not thousands of homes and businesses. The same problem hit parts of Florida.
Then, storms caused intense, destructive, sometimes record flooding in both the southwestern U.S. and in Florida. Then later in northern Georgia and southeast Pennsylvania.
The extreme weather had tapered off by Tuesday, but these are likely the opening salvos in a very rough weather winter.
KING TIDES
King Tides hit yearly, when the moon is a little closer to Earth than usual. That makes the pull of the tides stronger and higher. Climate change has raised sea levels, making flooding from King Tides a problem that now hits a few times of year.
In California, the King Tides hit atop a Kelvin Wave. .
A Kelvin Wave, which elevates sea levels, is underway along the California coast, The wave elevates sea levels by six to 12 inches. The King Tide, combined with the Kelvin Wave, caused record flooding.
Around Loa Angeles and San Diego, tides reached eight feet, shattering records and sending water through neighborhoods and major thoroughfares, like the Pacific Coast Highway. This was the worst of many high tide events around Loa Angeles this year. The city has had 12 coastal flood days in 2026. That has already outpaced any year out of the past 50. And there's two months to go this year.
This time around, record flooding hit California coastal communities, damaging at least hundreds of homes and businesses. In one spot, the high tide covered the Pacific Coast Highway in Huntington Beach. ,. Video showed makeshift sea walls made of sand bags and plastic, while water entered numerous SoCal homes.
Further north, San Francisco endured its highest tide ever seen during the month of October. A kayaker was spotted along a flooded section of the normally traffic-jammed 101 freeway.
In Florida, the problem wasn't a Kelvin Wave, but an easterly wind flow that piled water along the coastline just as the King Tides hit.
Virginia Key, which ia a barrier island near Miami, saw its highest King Tide and the third-highest water level since records started 30 years ago.
Video showed water flooding streets and lapping against homes and businesses in cities like Daytona Beach and Fort Lauderdale. The video showed cars driving through the salt water flooding.
Which is bad. Because TVs, golf cars and scooters are especially susceptible to salt water flooding. Lithium ion batteries exposed to salt water can start fires days or even weeks after being exposed to salt water.
After last week's flooding King Tides, the moon phases are changing, reducing the destructive King Tides for now. King Tides hit when the moon is a little closer to Earth than usual, causing tides to rise to higher levels.
But as destructive as the coastal flooding was last week, it might only be a foretaste of what's to come. More King Tides are coming, and those might well be accompanied by big storms, which would greatly exacerbate the damage.
Some of the storms have already hit in the past week or so, carrying intense, record flooding.
Flash floods extended across most of Arizona, from Flagstaff in the north to Tucson in the south.
Flagstaff had 3.37 inches of rain on Sunday, the third wettest day on record for the city. Flagstaff has already had its wettest meteorological autumn and there's still three weeks to go. (Meteological autumn runs from September 1 and November 30. Since September 1, Flagstaff has had 13.15 of rain since September 1.
A a result, water coursed through streets and homes. Unfortunately, the flooding killed two people in the city.
Elsewhere, on the weekend of October 23, the resort town of Pagosa Springs, Colorado, was inundated and badly damaged by downpours and intense flooding. The San Juan River crested at 15.02, nearly three feet higher than a damaging flood in August.
But that was only the beginning. The even more ferocious storm this past weekend, pushed the San Juan river to a crest of 16.81 feet, making it the second highest flood crest there, just short of a 1911 flood.
Luckily, the crest fell short of an expected 22 feet. But between October's flood and this one, the destruction was still extreme. At least one house was seen falling into the river and floating downstream before disintegrating against a bridge.
People were reported stranded in Durango and other towns. People were evacuated from several counties in southwest Colorado as creeks and rivers burst their banks.
Durango is a big tourist town, with plenty of condos and hotels. At one lodging, the Junction Hotel and Hostel, water filled the parking lot and first floor rooms.
FLORIDA
Next up was southeast and parts of eastern Florida, especially around Brevard County
Two people have been reported dead because of the flooding.
The flooding was widespread and exceptionally damaging, especially since it hit such a heavily populated area. AccuWeather estimates damage at between $3 billion and $5 billion.
On Tuesday, in a single day, Melbourne received 11.51 inches of rain. On November 2-3, Palm Bay had 14.19 inches of rain. 2
Storm totals included a whopping total of 28.93 inches in Malabar and 28.13 oil he's in Palm Bay. The flooding was so bad that there had to be Election Day polling changes in severe Florida counties.
The terrain is pretty flat, so the water wasn't able to drain well. So it lingered in some neighborhoods for days.
Most schools in Brevard County were closed for at least three days. Some schools opened on the first day of the downpours, and buses had to somehow return students home later in the day on flooded streets. One viral video showed a student being let off into thigh-deep flood waters in Port St. Lucie.
In an interview, the teen caught in the flooding said he was frightened by the experience, and his father said the school system should have planned out things better. El Nino is creating new challenges everywhere.
TENN/GA FLOODING
Some of the floods we've been seeing have been unexpected. Early Thursday, six to 11 inches of rain fell near the Tennessee and Georgia border. The rain pushed the Ocoee River to a record 18.05 feet. The previous record crest was 17.8 feet in 1990, and the river is around 2.5 feet on a normal day.
The flooding nearly completely trashed the adjacent small cities of McCaysville, Georgia and Copperhill, Tennessee. Some people were rescued from roofs. A 90 year old woman stood on the kitchen table in her flooded home for gawd knows how long until she was rescued.
So far, one person has been killed in this flooding.
Like so many of these storms lately, this flood was considered a one in one thousand year event. Also like other storms, the area punished by this flood was slammed by an inundation almost as bad just three months ago.
That will make recover that much harder because nobody has money left from the last disaster.
The storm that hit Georgia and Tennessee ended up going up the East Coast, causing additional flooding Cape Cod, Massachusetts. The New England flooding wasn't nearly as bad as that in Georgia, but streets in Falmouth and nearby communities were under more than a foot of water
MUCH MORE TO COME
El Nino continues to strengthen. The northern hemisphere storms are taking on their winter characteristics, and will continue to become more powerful, as they do in the winter.
The winter storms will get supercharged by El Nino, so it's clearly going to be a rough weather winter.
King Tides will return later this month and in December. If they're accompanied by one or more of those gigantic Pacific storms that often hit during those months, the destruction might be far beyond what we saw in October.
El Nino years often feature flooding rain storms, severe thunderstorms and tornadoes, especially along the Gulf Coast and in Florida. Some of the those powerful storms take a turn northward, up the Eastern Seaboard, causing high winds and heavy rain or snow.
It's impossible to predict when such storms will blow through and exactly how they'll behave.
Just expect a long winter.
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