Florida's Flood Sunday Ran the Whole State: Five to Eight Inches Estimated in Panama City, the St. Johns in Moderate Flood at Astor, and a Warning in Key West
The same storm system that kept South Florida under a flood watch through Monday dropped flash flooding on Bay County in the morning, pushed the St. Johns River at Astor — on Central Florida's own border — into moderate flood, and put water on streets from Highway 98 in Panama City to the Overseas Highway near Boca Chica.
Sunday's rain was not one Florida story but three, spread across the whole state. In the Panhandle, flash flooding hit Panama City on Sunday morning as the National Weather Service estimated five to eight inches of rain over central Bay County, with water reported on Highway 98 and Harrison Avenue downtown. The Weather Service's Tallahassee office had flash flood warnings up at 7:00 and 8:15 a.m. Central, extended at 8:36, after an overnight advisory counted 1.5 to 2.5 inches already down by 5 a.m. across central Bay, southeastern Walton and southwestern Washington counties, with Panama City, Lynn Haven, Callaway, Springfield, Hiland Park and Parker among the places listed for minor flooding. The five-to-eight-inch figure is a radar estimate, the roundup of the day's Weather Service products notes, until gauge totals are confirmed.
Closer to Orlando, the water is in the river. The St. Johns River at Astor — where Lake County meets Volusia County, northeast of Orlando — is in moderate flood, under a flood warning the Weather Service's Melbourne office issued Sunday morning. River flooding is the slow kind: it works downstream on its own schedule, and it is the Central Florida edge of a system whose other edges were a flood warning covering Key West and the Overseas Highway near Boca Chica, and the South Florida flood watch for Palm Beach, Broward, Miami-Dade and the Treasure Coast that runs through Monday afternoon.
Orlando's own piece of the pattern continues tonight and Monday: the station's live feed read 72.2 degrees in drizzle on Sunday evening, with Monday carrying the week's highest precipitation chance at 75 percent. No deaths, injuries or damage totals were reported in the Weather Service products read this cycle; the state's flood Sunday, as the official record stands tonight, is a water story — measured in inches, river stages and warnings — and Monday decides how much of it lingers.
