A flooded residential street is usually a pretty good reason to stay home.
One man in Mesa, Arizona, apparently saw other possibilities.
Video from Wednesday, Sept. 16, shows him riding a jet ski through a neighborhood after thunderstorms dumped heavy rain across the area. The clip, shared by The Weather Channel, shows the unusual ride taking place while flash flooding was affecting parts of the city.
The woman who recorded the footage, Karen J. Nechville, told Storyful that her neighborhood received five inches of rain in about 45 minutes. She had gone to check how much water was moving through a street behind her home when she encountered something considerably less routine: her neighbor on a personal watercraft.
Street Skiing
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The man motors through the brown floodwater as someone records from higher ground.
The stunt was happening against a much more serious backdrop.
At 1:13 p.m. that day, the National Weather Service in Phoenix extended a flash flood warning for part of Maricopa County that specifically included Mesa and Falcon Field Airport.
Radar indicated that between one and two inches of rain had already fallen in the warned area. Another one to two inches was possible, with rainfall rates expected to reach one to two inches per hour.
The warning said flooding was ongoing or expected to begin shortly on streets, highways, underpasses, and other low-lying areas.
Water In Motion
Elsewhere in Mesa, there was already evidence of what that could look like.
A trained weather spotter reported to the National Weather Service at 1:23 p.m. that six to eight inches of flowing water covered the road around East University Drive and North Recker Road. Several vehicles were reportedly stranded.
That location is especially notable because ABC15 placed the jet-ski ride in a neighborhood near Ellsworth Road and University Drive.
Other parts of Mesa were dealing with their own problems. Arizona’s Family reported that rushing water swept through streets near 64th Street and McKellips Road, leaving mud and debris behind. Emergency crews also responded near Power Road and Hermosa Vista Drive, where people were pulled from three stranded vehicles. No injuries were reported there.
Hidden Below
Several people reacting to the jet-ski video wondered what might happen if the rider struck something hidden beneath the muddy water.
That concern has a real-world basis even without knowing what, if anything, was underneath this particular street.
The City of Mesa warns that estimating the depth of running water or the strength of its current can be extremely difficult. Flooding can also conceal damaged roadway, and the city advises people not to walk or drive through floodwater.
Mesa’s stormwater system adds another reason submerged streets are unpredictable. The city says storm drains are designed to move rainwater off streets quickly, and heavy rain can carry debris and other pollutants into that system. The stormwater network is separate from Mesa’s sanitary sewer system, so the video alone provides no basis for social-media speculation that sewage was flowing through the neighborhood.
The storm had already demonstrated how quickly ordinary pavement could disappear. At University and Recker, the National Weather Service spotter’s report recorded flowing water six to eight inches deep — and vehicles that had not made it through.