Colossal rains and flash floods hammer the U.S. Southwest and Florida peninsula

Just before 1 p.m. EST Sunday, a Learjet flying from Texas to Florida penetrated the core of a thunderstorm over Florida at 35,000 feet, encountering icing and moderate turbulence, which caused up to 700-foot jolts in altitude. The plane crashed minutes later, killing all nine passengers. Lots of factors for the NTSB to sort out, but it is apparent that N722BD flew directly into an intense convective core with rapid vertical growth.The aircraft likely succumbed to rapid icing while also encountering severe turbulence. pic.twitter.com/8hePWmyXBp— Matthew Cappucci (@MatthewCappucci) November 2, 2026 This thunderstorm was part of an onslaught of heavy rain that pummeled the central Florida coast on Sunday and Monday. The National Weather Service declared a Flash Flood Emergency at 9:30 a.m. EST Monday for West Melbourne and Palm Bay, Florida, for potential catastrophic flooding, with the emergency extended through at least 1:45 p.m. EST. Between 15 and 20 inches of rain had fallen from Sunday through midday Monday, the NWS warned, with another two to four inches possible. The NWS has placed the region in its “Moderate” (level 3 out of 4) risk for extreme rainfall today. On Monday morning, the NWS also issued a Flash Flood Warning for interior portions of Florida at Sebring, where five to nine inches of rain had fallen, with another two to three inches possible. Florida’s extreme rains have been caused by a moist easterly flow of air steered by a strong high-pressure system to the northeast, along with a weak upper-air low-pressure system over the state. This set-up created slow-moving thunderstorms that passed repeatedly over the same areas, leading to torrential rains and extreme flooding. The record rains have been boosted by record-to-near-record warm ocean temperatures off the east coast of Florida. According to Climate Central’s Ocean Shift Index, waters of this warmth were made 10 to 100 times more likely by human-caused climate change. Figure 1. Locations where sea surface temperatures were record-warm (red areas with hatching) on October 31, 2026. (Image credit: Alex Boreham, cyclonicwx.com) The Florida rains exceeded the local definition of a 1,000-year six-hour rain event by a considerable margin, as pointed out by Jeff Berardelli in his Bluesky post below. His estimate was based on interpolations using radar data and limited rain-gauge data (called an MRMS composite analysis), so there isn’t always an on-the-ground rain-gauge total that matches up with it. For more general background, see this NWS explainer on 1,000-year rainfall assessments. Using the MRMS data, Berardelli documented two additional 1,000-year rain events since Friday: 19 inches in six hours in southwest Mississippi near the Louisiana border on Saturday, and over three inches in three hours on the southeast side of Las Vegas at Henderson on Friday. Miami’s worst king tides on record finish a record 11-day streak On Sunday, November 1, Miami, Florida finally broke a streak of 11 consecutive days of reaching the “Moderate” flooding threshold — with two of the days at the “Major” flooding threshold — as strong onshore winds combined with full moon–enhanced king tides to bring damaging flooding. This was Miami’s longest streak of moderate coastal flooding on record and brought the total number of moderate flood days for 2026 to 15, eclipsing the previous record of 10 days set in 2019. Since Miami’s tide gauge was installed in 1994 at Virginia Key, four of the top water levels on record occurred during the October 2026 king tides, with 60% of the top 15 readings occurring during king tides over the past two years. Figure 2. Highest water levels on record at the Virginia Key, Florida, tide gauge. A strong onshore flow of wind continues into Thursday for South Florida, then will relax. Coastal flooding in the “Minor” range occurred both yesterday and today, and according to the latest forecast from the European model ensemble, additional minor flooding will occur in Miami for the next 10 days. The flooding will be exacerbated today and Tuesday by runoff from expected heavy rains of one to two inches, which will combine with the high tides to create a compound flood event (see our August post, The floods of the future won’t come one at a time, to learn how climate change is increasing the threat of these types of flood events). A Flood Watch for heavy rains of three to five inches and a Coastal Flood Advisory for minor to moderate coastal flooding have been posted through Tuesday night for much of South Florida. Fortunately, during the coming king tides of November 6-8 caused by the new moon, a strong onshore flow of wind is not expected, which should keep flooding in the minor rather than moderate range. More flooding pain is in sight for Florida late this month, though: The king tides are coming back during the full moon period of November 23-26, when NOAA is predicting the third-highest tides of the year, about 0.2 feet below the expected levels from September and October’s king tides. If another regime of strong onshore winds develops during that time, a new streak of moderate flooding is likely to occur. Repeated flooding across so many consecutive high tide cycles can be more damaging than a single flood at a higher water level, since the coast spends more time at high water levels, allowing waves to chew away and erode beaches and dunes. In addition, the repeated flooding gives little chance for interim flood defense efforts to occur. Record coastal flooding October 26-29 in Southern California The October full moon high tides also brought record flooding to both San Diego and Los Angeles. Of their top-10 water levels in over a century of recordkeeping, four are now held by October 2026, with an additional two records from the full moon high tides in July. There is the potential for more top-10 records Nov. 7-10 during the new moon high tides if strong onshore winds are present. The bigger concern is the king tides during the November 23-27 full moon period, when water levels about half a foot above the expected levels from the October peak tides will occur. Figure 3. Highest coastal flood days on record for San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Francisco, California (left to right). Yet another sopping-wet storm slams the Four Corners states A potent atmospheric river pushed near-record amounts of moisture for early November across Arizona on Sunday and Monday into the hard-hit Four Corners region. This storm system still pulled in exceptionally warm, moisture-laden air from the tropical Eastern Pacific. The upper-level low swinging through the Southwest directed that moisture squarely into the Mogollon Rim that separates Arizona’s low-level deserts from the high country to their north, which added an upslope component to the rain-making formula. Evacuations were widespread for low-lying areas across northern Arizona, and at least one person was reported missing. Flagstaff, Arizona, reported 3.37 inches of rain on Sunday, which was the city’s third-largest precipitation total for any day in 128 years of recordkeeping and a record for any November day. Farther north, Salt Lake City, Utah, racked up 1.14 inches, its fourth-largest precipitation total for any November day in records there going back to 1874. Over the beleaguered Four Corners area, initial reports suggest that river crests were not quite as severe as had been forecast on Sunday, but at least one exceeded a modern-day record set just a few days earlier. At Pagosa Springs, the San Juan River crested at 16.81 feet at 8 p.m. MST Sunday; that’s well beyond the 15.02 feet set on October 23 and rivaled only by the 17.8 feet measured on October 5, 1911. (This gauge was out of service from 9:45 p.m. Sunday until 10 a.m. Monday, so any secondary peak would have been missed.) Officials say the San Juan River has peaked overnight and is starting to recede. There are still many major roadways closed for now and others that will be closed for weeks or months as some are washed out. pic.twitter.com/NXAxO352Dy— Jayson Luber (@Denver7Traffic) November 2, 2026 At Farmington, New Mexico, the San Juan was predicted to crest on Monday evening at 12.06 feet. This would fall short of the record 14.07 feet observed on October 23, but it would still be higher than any other crest on record since the 12.3 feet recorded on September 6, 1909. On the colder back side of the departing upper low, winter storm warnings were in effect Monday for widespread 12- to 18-inch snow totals over the San Juan Mountains above 10,000 feet. This will add to the already-substantial snowpack in far southwest Colorado, putting “water in the bank” and perhaps eventually helping to replenish Arizona’s severely depleted Lake Powell. That critical reservoir was still at just 25% of capacity as of November 1, even after the region’s string of wet October storms. 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