Key West runs on seawater the way Aspen, Jackson Hole and Mad River Glen run on snow. Water for us; snow for them. Too much, too little, tourists stay home and we’ve got holes in our pockets.

We market the heck out of our beaches, sandbars and water sports. We entice tourists and snowbirds with sunsets over an endless ocean and fake them out with colorized underwater coral, pretty much none of which exists anymore. We most definitely do not show them videos of the dead reef, the sargassum-inundated beaches and the king tide flooding that’s plagued us for weeks.

Used to be tourists avoided Key West in September and October because of hurricanes. In 2026 we added May, June, July and August as record-breaking levels of sargassum made our beaches unusable. Now we can add the spring and late fall king tides as just another reason to scratch Key West off the bucket list.

Don’t believe me? Take a short social media spin to discover disgruntled visitors who thought they were getting a postcard tropical vacation and instead got sargassum and flooding that made daytime and nighttime adventures akin to the B-roll of a post-apocalyptic movie. Couple of years in a row of sargassum and flooding and we’ll be a destination to avoid. Add in another Hurricane Wilma or Irma, and the economy will be, well, under water.

Most of Key West sits 5 to 8 feet above sea level. The highest point is Solares Hill at 18. The lowest is actual sea level, because there are no lower land depressions on the island. It rises about one inch every eight years, so let’s make sea level about five inches higher now than in 2000.

Doesn’t sound like much until you realize the water that used to stay within a street’s curbs now sweeps into your yard. So when someone tells you, “Oh, this has never flooded,” you’d do well to be wary.

I’ve long said I want to sell my house 10 years before the headlines scare the wits out of home buyers. It’s eight feet above sea level with another 18 inches of free space under the house. That’s enough to keep us in the X flood zone and get a break on insurance. It isn’t enough to escape the inexorable encroachment of king tide flooding, which, coupled with rain like last week’s, turned our neighborhood into its own island.

I think I have until about 2040 to get the house sold. By then sea level could be 17 inches above 2000 and that’ll mean flooding to the steps. And if there’s a Wilma? The flooding of my once high-and-dry house will be halfway to the windows.

Key West water: Too much of a good thing?

Mother Nature doesn’t care a whit for our laments over sargassum and floods. Doesn’t give a nevermind for trolls who deny sea level rise and climate change. Giggling at naysayers who can’t get past their “It’s always been like this” claims, she likely guffaws at workshops that propose elevating roads, raising houses on stilts and scooping up sargassum before it dies slowly on the beach.

We’ll get another taste of sea level rise shortly. Mark this date on your calendar: Oct. 28. Maybe add Oct. 30. Come the end of the month, Key West’s king tides are expected to peak again, subside for a couple weeks and come roaring back toward the end of November, just in time to brine the Thanksgiving turkey.

King tides are a natural phenomenon. Anyone who’s paid attention knows that when the moon and the sea align just right, the tides bubble up from our porous underground, seep through the asphalt crevices and lie deep and salty across low-lying areas — even when the skies are sunny. Add some rain and, voila, we’ve got kayaking on Greene Street, water in the kitchen and snarled traffic across the island.

We’re an isolated speck of limestone that’s paved over its freshwater springs, filled its natural flood plains with concrete and asphalt and thumbed its nose at the science that could have mitigated the environmental damage. We could have kept sandy roads or used brick like the old days. Either would have enhanced drainage after floods. We could have refused to plop houses, ball fields, tennis and pickleball courts and parking lots smack in flood plains.

Woulda. Coulda. Shoulda. Too late now. But we can adapt to the onslaught, mitigate as best science and budgets allow and hope we don’t get hit full on with a Cat 5+ superstorm. Our current Tourist Development Council slogan will morph into: “Play in your own Key — Most dates excluded.” Don’t forget to buy the trip insurance and bring your waders.

Learn more

https://www.sfwmd.gov/news-events/news/weekly-king-tide-forecast-44

https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/trends-and-extremes/index.html

https://www.weather.gov/key/coastal_flooding