So my wife took me upstairs and described exactly what she was doing when it happened. She started the water to get it warm and got sidetracked by a particularly nasty diaper from my oldest and by the time she came back the tub was "almost full"
Well what does almost full mean? I asked her to point at how high the water was. She pointed higher than the overflow, so yeahhhhh looks like it may indeed be that. Which is probably best case scenario and like you mentioned why we only have this instance of it ever happening.