Wednesday night's flooding in the Green Bay area posed an obstacle for drivers, as many chose to drive through deep water. But doing so, can cause a lot of problems for your vehicle. June 25, 2026. PC: Fox 11 Online
GREEN BAY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) — Wednesday night’s flooding in the Green Bay area posed an obstacle for drivers, as many chose to drive through deep water.
But doing so, can cause a lot of problems for your vehicle.
Auto repair shops like Auto Aces of Green Bay kept busy because of that after Wednesday’s flooding. Auto Aces said driving through flooded streets isn’t worth the risk to your car.
“Deep water, it can be catastrophic,” Auto Aces Owner Brian Buck said.
Wednesday’s downpour saw many Green Bay drivers testing their luck on flooded streets.
But Buck said driving in that high of water can create a lot of headaches for you and your car.
“I mean, the engine sucks air in through the air filter, goes into the intake system, and it can lock the motor up cause, you know, extreme damage. Not only to the engine, but to the transmission,” Buck said.
He added, this year is the worst he’s ever seen with water impacting cars.
His Green Bay store had six vehicles come through before 9 a.m. Thursday, all with water-related issues.
Repairs can range anywhere from just a few bucks up to thousands of dollars.
He said the amount of water a car can drive through depends on the size of the car.
For some, it’s about a foot of water, but for others, it only takes a few inches for major problems.
If you’re in water and you think it’s too deep, it’s too deep. And if you gotta go through it, your best line of defense is to go very slow. Turn your hazards on, go really slow, ’cause if you’re making a wake that multiplies the depth of the water, go slow.
Between 6:00 p.m. and 9:00 p.m. Wednesday, the Green Bay Metro Fire Department responded to 42 calls for service.
Many of them involved stalled vehicles in flooded roads.
By Thursday afternoon, Green Bay Public Works said most of the water in streets had subsided.
“We had a number of different types of crews out last night responding to a variety of things. Today it’s cleanup work,” Director of Green Bay Public Works Valerie Joosten said.
Drivers on Lombardi Avenue pushed their way through the water Wednesday evening.
Joosten said Wednesday’s flooding is nothing to be concerned about.
“When you have a lot of rainfall all at once, the storm sewers are not really designed to handle at all. And so it sometimes takes a little bit for everything to work its way through the system into the storm inlets,” Joosten said.
Joosten suggests people keep storm drains clear to limit future flooding.
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