The forecasters never saw it coming: More than a foot of rain in some areas
and severe flooding along the coast Thursday night and much of Friday.

"I
can be very frank. We expected heavy rain, but nothing like what we got," said
Rusty Pfost, head of the National Weather Service in Miami.

Thousands of
residents, motorists and travelers also were taken by surprise. Streets and
intersections from Dania Beach to North Miami Beach looked like lakes. Homes and
businesses were flooded and residents of some communities were evacuated to a
Red Cross shelter, where they'll stay at least until Saturday. Six flights were
diverted from Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport to Palm Beach
International Airport.

The deluge was over by late Friday afternoon,
thanks to a cold front blasting from the north. That front will bring sunny
skies and a temporary respite from the heat this weekend. Saturday's forecast
calls for afternoon highs in the mid 70s and evening lows in the low
50s.

Sunday and Monday should be mostly sunny and cooler yet, with highs
in the upper 60s and lows in the mid to upper 40s. By Wednesday, temperatures
should return to normal, with highs in the upper 70s and lows in the mid
60s.

The torrents left some areas in South Florida worse than
others.

Hallandale Beach, Hollywood and Dania Beach took the brunt of the
system in Broward
County. Fire-rescue trucks towed boats through the Bamboo Mobile Home Park
in Pembroke Park, rescuing residents from rising water that lapped at their
front doors.

In Palm Beach County,
more than 38,000 customers in Lake Worth went without power for at least part of
the day. There were fewer outages, less than 2,000, reported for Florida Power
& Light customers from Miami-Dade north to St. Lucie counties.

Water
reached the door handles of cars in many areas of Hallandale Beach and
Hollywood, where stranded vehicles were a common sight. AAA told some customers
they would have to wait as long as four hours for a tow truck.

In
Hallandale Beach, the parking lot at Gulfstream Park Racing and Casino was
transformed into a huge lake, and the Red Cross set up a shelter near City Hall,
taking in up to 50 people Friday night.

The weather service will take a
look at whether it could have better alerted residents. "Our forecasters are
disappointed we didn't do a better job with this. We're going to do better next
time," Pfost said.

The main problem, he said, was that the hardest rains
hit in a relatively small area along the coast, and it is difficult to predict a
deluge on such a small scale.

"We have made incredible advances in
weather forecasting, but we cannot forecast something like this on a
neighborhood scale," he said.

On Thursday, the weather service predicted
an 80 percent chance of rain for Friday, including possible thunderstorms — and
severe thunderstorms.

Forecasters knew there was a warm front approaching
the state from the south, injecting moisture and instability into the atmosphere
in advance of a strong cold front.

They also had an inkling that heavy
rains were in the offing when storms flooded streets in Miami on Thursday
afternoon. The weather service issued a flash flood warning at the time, but
discontinued it when the water ran off, Pfost said.

What they didn't
foresee was a wind shift by early Friday morning, delivering an "incredible
amount" of moisture out of the southeast, Pfost said.

The rain fell too
fast in certain areas for drainage systems to handle it, according to the South
Florida Water Management District.

District officials said its system of
levees, pumps and canals — which control water coming from local drainage
systems — was working, but the rainfall in some areas was just too much.
Drainage canals along the coast were kept lower in anticipation of the recent
rain, but in some areas that wasn't enough to avoid flooding, officials
said.

By Friday morning, 24-hour rainfall totals hit 5 to 7 inches along
the coast in Broward and Palm Beach counties, and a whopping 14 inches at a rain
gauge in northern Miami-Dade County, according to the district.

Much of
the region's inland area received relatively little rain. Cooper City received
1.88 inches and some areas west of Interstate 75 in Pembroke Pines got no rain
all, Pfost said.

Staff Writers Joel Marino, Alexia Campbell and Susannah
Bryan contributed to this report.

Graphic:Rain hits South Florida