Sarasota neighborhood gets 8 inches of rain in 3 hours

SARASOTA, Fla. (WFLA) — A stack of wet newspapers on St. Armand’s Circle is part of what’s left to see from Tuesday night’s record-setting rainfall in Sarasota County.

There wasn’t much debris in that area on Wednesday morning, just a few knocked-over trash cans and cars being towed away.

Driving through on Wednesday, you wouldn’t know how bad the flooding was but those who endured it won’t forget.

“If this is just a small unnamed storm, I’m definitely concerned to see what hurricane season holds for us,” Sarasota neighbor Gabe Lauer said.

The area around St. Armands Circle got 8 inches of rain in three hours on Tuesday night.

“Probably over the course of five hours-ish is when he started getting up to about a foot and a half or two. And that’s when I started seeing cars getting stuck,” Lauer said.

Luckily, nearby businesses prepared by setting up sandbags. But like Lauer said, people trying to drive through the streets in the area weren’t so lucky.

“You couldn’t really pull over into a parking lot and then there’s medians so it was almost like everybody was just trying to get over to try to get out of the water,” said Sarasota Neighbor Wendy Koelling. “But then when we were all just kind of like little boats.”

Several cars were being towed Wednesday morning.

Almost four inches of rain fell between 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. Tuesday. That’s the most by almost an inch since 2006.

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