NEAR SARASOTA, Fla. (WSVN) – A woman found herself in deep trouble as Hurricane Idalia struck Florida. With debris floating by, she decided to swim and record the flooding on video.
Alexis DeLeon faced in the eye of a hurricane, but instead of taking cover, she went in for a dip.
“It was scary, to say the least,” she said.
Video showed DeLeon doing laps through rising floodwaters of a submerged neighborhood in Anna Maria Island in the pitch of darkness.
“We decided to stay out there and not leave the island,” DeLeon said.
Garbage bins, furniture, lamp posts and signs floated along the streets.
While many residents along Florida’s east coast evacuated ahead of the hurricane, she stayed behind.
“We kinda knew this storm wasn’t gonna be as much wind and rain as we’re typically used to with storms, so we just knew that storm surge was gonna be coming in, mixed with that high tide. That was the scariest part,” DeLeon said.
Idalia made landfall Wednesday morning as a powerful Category 3 hurricane.
Luckily, DeLeon’s home was spared from the ravaging floods.
“It was starting to go back down before we started venturing out, and we realized, you know, it wasn’t coming up into our house,” she said.
Video of her doing laps amid disaster gained over 1.3 million views on TikTok.
“Golf carts, cars, super flooded, the trailer homes. I mean [the water] was up to our knees, our waist,” she said.
But DeLeon said this isn’t her first time taking a swim in flooded streets.
“Last year during Hurricane Ian, I actually did the same thing,” she said.
The viral storm swimmer said her videos helped give some peace of mind to those who left their homes behind.
“I was one of the very few people still out there, so I was just going up and down each block, you know, videoing as much as I could and posting it so people could maybe see their house and see that it was OK,” DeLeon said.
Those TikTok videos sparked waves of concern online as viewers wondered if the activity was safe or even sanitary.
Fortunately, DeLeon remained unscathed from her swim and the hurricane.
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