'Woohoo!' — Men Kayak Through Flooded Levittown Parking Lot

LEVITTOWN, NY — It's a rare weekday you get to go kayaking. Work, school, familial obligations and whatnot can make it hard to find quality downtime. But when thunderstorms rumbled over Long Island on Wednesday, one man took Mother Nature's lemons and made his own brand of lemonade.

Light rain began in Levittown around 11 a.m. Wednesday, with heavier rains beginning around 1 p.m. Thunderstorms rolled over the area around 3 p.m., lingering for about an hour.

While it didn't rain long, it was enough to cause flash-flooding in the parking lot of the Walmart store near Garden Avenue and state Route 24, known as Hempstead BethPage Turnpike. Video posted on Twitter around 6:30 p.m. Wednesday showed one man paddling a pink kayak behind a line of parked cars and SUVs at the strip mall. A four-door Jeep drives directly through the makeshift pond, sending a wave of water at the kayaker, who yells "woohoo!"

The adventurer paddles on for a short distance before hopping out of the kayak and pulling it away. You can watch video of the kayaker below.

Dylan Tanella, of Wantagh, told Patch on Thursday he was the kayaker in the video. He was running errands at the time and happened to have a kayak in the back of his truck. When he saw the parking lot had flooded, he got the idea to take the kayak for a dip.

"I thought wouldn't this be a great funny thing that not only I could enjoy, but everyone could enjoy," he said.

Tanella had never kayaked in a parking lot before, so he called up a buddy who he knew wouldn't say no. As the two were having a good time, the driver of the Jeep who splashed him stopped and told them there was another mall with a parking lot that flooded even more. Perfect for kayaking. Tanella and his buddy Tom Franz headed to the Nassau Mall on Hempstead Turnpike.

"It was a lot deeper," he said with a laugh. "Drawing a bit of a crowd, a lot of people gathering, taking videos and laughing."

Tanella estimated he was kayaking in up to 2 1/2 feet of water at the second mall.

"People were kind of going nuts," he said.

A couple teens tried to drive their cars through the standing water, possibly damaging — or totaling — their cars, he added.

"It was a fun thing that we can enjoy and everyone else was having a good time," he said. "It made a lot of peoples' day better, giving them a nice laugh."

Asked if he would do it again, Tanella didn't hesitate.

"I think knowing the drainage system is bad in those two areas, we'll be back next time," he said.

@News12LI My wife Kathy just came back from Walmart in Levittown and this is what she saw lol pic.twitter.com/UHoftG7fIc
— Charley (@PNyles) August 28, 2019

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Parking lot kayaking on this beautiful day #hotgirlsummer
A post shared by Dylan Tanella (@dylantanella) on Aug 29, 2019 at 11:07am PDT