No easy fix to Sarasota's flood-prone roadways

Rising tides, increased development and ongoing construction lead to flooded roadways in downtown area

SARASOTA — When it rains, it pours, and it puddles along U.S. 41 in downtown Sarasota.

Although flooding along the busy corridor is hardly new, it appears to happen ever more frequently and has increasingly frustrated residents and city officials alike over the past summer.

In some extraordinary cases, Sarasota Police have shut down the flood-prone stretch of U.S. 41 from Fruitville Road to Gulfstream Avenue, such as when record rainfall drenched the area in late August.

But in stranger cases, certain portions of that same area have become essentially impassable after just an hour or two of heavy rain, such as the Monday evening storm on Oct. 23 and several afternoon showers in June and July.