As Central Floridians stagger to their feet from Hurricane Milton — picking up debris and watching their lights come back on — emergency officials are preparing for another potential disaster: rising flood waters along the St. Johns River.
Crews in Seminole County closed several flooded roads this weekend, including along the western shore of Lake Harney near the Geneva community, around Mullet Lake Park, and on the southern side of Lake Jesup, after several homes took on water from the north-flowing St. Johns. The water reached knee deep in many of those areas.
Teams from the Florida National Guard and the Seminole County Fire Department have evacuated 15 people since last Thursday from flooded homes in Geneva and the Spring Oaks neighborhood, which rests in a crook of the Little Wekiva River in Altamonte Springs.
Residents in and near those areas are being urged to take precautions and consider evacuating if the St. Johns continues to threaten. Water levels are due to crest Thursday or Friday.
After a heavy rain event like Milton, which dropped 10-12 inches or more across much of Central Florida, some places in the region flood almost immediately. What happens near the St. Johns is different.
The St. Johns River flows northward from Indian River County through Brevard, Osceola and Orange counties. It can take days for the St. Johns to crest as runoff flows into the river and its tributaries. Flooding occurs primarily around the low-lying choke points near Lakes Harney, Jesup and Monroe, a trio of large basins connected to the river.
“At Lake Harney, it’s currently at major flooding and forecasted to remain at major flooding through Oct. 19,” said Ashley Evitt, spokesperson for the St. Johns River Water Management District.
As of Monday afternoon, Lake Harney water levels were 10.3 feet above normal and expected to reach about a third of a foot higher by Friday, according to District data. The record level is 12.7 feet set days after Hurricane Ian in September 2022.
Ian’s flooding led to scores of residents being evacuated by emergency responders using high-water vehicles and dozens of homes inundated, especially in the Geneva area. Officials don’t anticipate a repeat of that scenario.
Floodwaters from Ian also flowed from Lake Monroe into downtown Sanford, shutting access to the Seminole courthouse, City Hall and Marina Isle for weeks.
“We’re still not at a place where we can make a determination yet as to what the effects will be in Sanford,” said Alan Harris, director of Seminole’s emergency management division. “But it hasn’t been as bad as Ian yet.”
Lisa Holder, spokesperson for the city of Sanford, said city staff expect flooding to recede in some areas “but rise in others over the next few days.”
Officials also are concerned about a cold front moving into the region this week that is forecast to bring wind gusts of up to 30 mph on Friday and Saturday, according to the National Weather Service in Melbourne.
Coming from the northeast, the gusts could cause the St. Johns to flow temporarily in reverse, or toward the south, Evitt said. “That’s another possible danger.”
“When you have reverse flow, it creates a pooling effect in the middle of the St. Johns River. That could make the flooding worse,” Evitt said. “We did experience that reverse flow as Milton headed out [of Florida]. Those winds pushed the water south…So the winds this week will definitely play a factor.”
In addition, officials are concerned about so-called king tides that will occur later this week and could also lead to stronger flooding. King tides are exceptionally high tides that occur during full moons when the sun, earth and moon are aligned and create strong gravitational pulls.
“The timing is not great with the king tides,” Evitt said. “Hopefully the northeasterly winds won’t be as strong.”
Before Milton moved through Florida on Oct. 10, Seminole officials expected between 15 and 20 inches of rain. Seminole rain gauges, instead, registered about 13 inches near Lake Mary.
“It moved out rather quickly,” Harris said of Milton, lessening the predicted impact across the region.
Still, Milton left downed trees, fallen branches and tens of thousands of residents in Central Florida struggling without power — many through the weekend.
But by Monday, just 4,790 out of the more than 1.3 million utility customers in Orange, Seminole, Osceola and Lake were still in the dark. The lion’s share were in Orange and Lake, according to poweroutage.us, which collects data from utilities nationwide.
Last Friday, roughly 200,000 customers in the four-county area were waiting for their power to be restored.
But over the weekend, tens of thousands of customers got their lights back on. As of Saturday afternoon, 77,355 customers were still without power in Orange, Lake, Osceola and Seminole counties.
The area’s largest utilities, Orlando Utilities Commission and Duke Energy, said last week they would restore power for most customers by the end of Sunday and it appears they kept that promise.
Still, 369,502 Florida customers remained without power on Monday, according to poweroutage.us. Most of those customers are on the Gulf Coast between the Tampa Bay area and Sarasota. Duke Energy said Monday in a press release it had whittled the number of statewide customers without power from 1 million to roughly 105,000.
OUC had just 11 Orange County customers left in the dark on Monday afternoon, according to poweroutage.us.