Rain walloped the New York Metropolitan area with a startling punch Friday, knocking out several subway and commuter rail lines, stranding drivers on highways, flooding basements and shuttering a terminal at LaGuardia Airport for hours in one of the city’s wettest days in decades.
More than 7.25 inches (18.41 centimetres) of rain had fallen in parts of Brooklyn by nightfall, with at least one spot seeing 2.5 inches (6 centimetres) in a single hour, according to weather and city officials. The 8.65 inches (21.97 centimetres) at John F. Kennedy Airport surpassed its record for any September day, a bar set during Hurricane Donna in 1960, the National Weather Service said.
The deluge came two years after the remnants of Hurricane Ida dumped record-breaking rain on the Northeast and killed at least 13 people in New York City, mostly in flooded basement apartments. Although no deaths or severe injuries have been reported so far from friday’s storm, it stirred frightening memories. Ida killed three of Joy Wong’s neighbours, including a toddler.On friday, water began lapping against the front door of her building in Woodside, Queens.
“I was so worried,” she said. It became too dangerous to leave: “Outside was like a lake, like an ocean.’’ Within minutes, water filled the building’s basement nearly to the ceiling. After the family’s deaths in 2021, the basement was turned into a recreation room. It is now destroyed.
City officials said they got reports of six flooded basement apartments Friday, but all occupants got out safely. The remnants of Tropical Storm Ophelia over the Atlantic Ocean combined with a mid-latitude system arriving from the west, at a time of year when conditions coming off the ocean are particularly juicy for storms, National Weather Service meteorologist Ross Dickman said. And this combination storm parked itself over New York for 12 hours.
The weather service had warned of 3 to 5 inches (7.5 to 13 centimetres) of rain and told emergency managers to expect over 6 inches (15 centimetres) in some places, Dickman said.
The deluge came less than three months after a storm caused deadly floods in New York’s Hudson Valley and swamped Vermont’s capital, Montpelier.
As the planet warms, storms are forming in a hotter atmosphere that can hold more moisture, making extreme rainfall more frequent, according to atmospheric scientists. But in the case of Friday’s storm, nearby ocean temperatures were below normal, and air temperatures weren’t too hot. Still, it became the third time in two years that rain fell at rates near 2 inches (5 centimetres) an hour in Central Park, which is unusual, Columbia University climate scientist Adam Sobel said. The park recorded 5.8 inches (14.73 centimetres) of rain by nightfall Friday.