Revellers in flooded Miami filmed partying through tropical storm

Miami residents kept the city’s party scene alive over the weekend despite heavy flooding and tropical storm warnings.

In a video shared to social media on Saturday morning, a woman in a shiny silver dress was seen climbing out of her car’s sunroof and sliding down the windshield into several inches of floodwater.

The US National Weather Service (NWS) had earlier issued warnings of flash flooding in parts of southern Florida including Miami-Dade County, where more than 10 inches of rain fell between Friday and Sunday.

Parts of the city were submerged by the rain, which subsided by Saturday night. The tropical storm system was southern Florida’s first for the hurricane season that started on 1 June.

“Can you help me push this down?,” asked the woman in the now viral video, showing other stranded cars and torrential rain. Both she and a man behind the camera were standing in deep floodwater in what appeared to be an area in Miami’s downtown.

First responders spent hours rescuing vehicles on Friday night, the Miami Herald and WTSP reported, with dozens of drivers also getting stuck in flood water.

Many of the rescue attempts were carried out in Brickell, an upmarket area of downtown Miami where clubbers regularly spend their Friday and Saturday nights, reports suggested.

While heavy rainfall is not unusual in southern Florida, the city of Miami has been named the “most vulnerable” coastal city anywhere in the world as a result of rising sea levels fueled by a warming climate.

A 2020 model created by Resources for the Future, a nonpartisan economic think tank, predicted “100-year floods” every few years in Miami. Other parts of Florida also lie several inches above sea level, making them susceptible to flooding.

As The New York Times reported on Saturday, some 310m gallons of wastewater and rainwater flowed into the Miami-Dade County treatment plant as a result of the storm.

That was more than double the average daily limit, leading the county to issue a “no swim” and “no fishing” alert until the flood waters subside because of the threat of sewage overflowing. As have people been advised against driving in flood water.

The drainage system in Miami was recently installed to manage increasing flooding risks associated with climate change, which could see sea levels rise by as much as 31 inches by 2060, according to the most severe estimates.