Getty Multiple Florida storms have caused major flooding in 2023, including a storm that left HGTV's Galey Alix stranded.
Clean-up efforts are underway in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where HGTV star Galey Alix got trapped inside her home after it was hit by what she called an “unexpected hurricane” on November 16, 2023.
The star of “Home in a Heartbeat with Galey Alix” shared several updates in her Instagram Stories showing the extent of the damage both inside and outside her house. With the power out, Alix got stuck inside for hours, unable to open her property’s heavy, electronic gate. But the famous DIYer, who has over nearly two million Instagram followers and three million more on TikTok, documented how she eventually climbed out and got help.
Here’s what you need to know:
HGTV’s Galey Alix Said Her ‘Entire Yard Became a Swimming Pool’ During Storm
HGTVGaley Alix of HGTV’s new series “Home in a Heartbeat with Galey Alix”
“Fort Lauderdale had an unexpected hurricane last night out of NOWHERE,” Alix wrote in her Instagram Stories on the morning of November 16, showing video of her walking through her backyard, where a mess of branches and leaves were seen floating in her pool and all over the yard. “Streets are all under water. We still have no power. And the clean-up is wild.”
Sharing a video of her leaking kitchen ceiling, Alix wrote, “The amount of excessive rain we got flooded my flat roof.”
Over a video of the standing water on her backyard patio, she wrote, “My entire yard became a swimming pool…and this was before we had another 10 hours straight of downpouring sideways rain.”
Alix, who has hinted recently that her show has been picked up for a second season, explained in her Stories that due to her power being out, she couldn’t run any water pumps or blowers and was trapped inside her house.
“I am physically stuck in my house because my gate is 800 lbs and can’t be opened without electricity,” she explained, adding a photo of herself walking through water that nearly reached her knees.
Hurricane season officially ends in Florida on November 30, according to the Associated Press. However, the storm that ripped through Broward County on the night of November 15 wasn’t actually a hurricane, despite wind gusts of up to 70 miles per hour and up to nine inches of rain from the Florida Keys to For Lauderdale.
Luke Culver, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Miami, told the AP, “It’s not considered a tropical system because of the way it formed.”
The storm packed a punch, nonetheless. According to Fox Weather, the massive rain has earned Fort Lauderdale the title of “wettest city in America,” after multiple storms this year. Fort Lauderdale averages about 60.95 inches of rain per year, Fox reported, but by the morning of the latest storms, it had reached 102 inches of rain in 2023. Its all-time wettest year was in 1947, when the area had 102.56 inches of rain.
Galey Alix Says She Climbed Out of Her Property to Get Ice & Find Help
After the worst of the storm, Alix said she ordered ice bags from a grocery delivery service, hoping to keep the items in her freezer — including special dog food for her pups. She decided to climb over her gate in order to retrieve them.
Once on the outside of her property, she befriended a utilities worker named Leonard who was trying to figure out how to get power back on in the area. A DIYer through and through, she followed him from house to house, she said, as he tried to figure out what had caused the neighborhood’s fuse box to shut off.
“This is how I learned to DIY,” she told followers over photos and video of Leonard at work. “Any time I see someone working on something I don’t leave their side and ask them a million annoying questions until I know how to do it myself.”
Eventually, he found the issue and was able to get the power back on, which had Alix squealing with glee. She was so excited, in fact, she amusingly added a photo of him to her Stories with Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” playing in the background.
Alix and her beau, former “Bachelorette” star Dale Moss, consider her Florida residence their “home base,” according to People. But since he commutes back and forth from New York, where he’s a model, TV host and entrepreneur, she was alone at home during the storm.