NEW YORK, Sept 30 (NNN-AGENCIES) — Torrential downpours after a week of mostly steady rainfall brought flash flooding to New York City on Friday, disrupting subway service, inundating ground-level apartments and turning some streets into small lakes.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul declared an official state of emergency for the city of 8.5 million and its densely-populated suburbs, including Long Island to the east and the Hudson river valley to the north.
The National Weather Service warned of flooding through late Friday with as much as 5.1cm of rain falling per hour. It said total accumulation on Friday could hit 18cm, warning of flash flooding in urban and poor drainage areas.
Mayor Eric Adams urged people not to venture out because the streets were blocked and subway stations flooded.
“If you are home, stay home. If you are at work or school, shelter in place for now, some of our subways are flooded and it’s extremely difficult to move around the city,” he said.
In the subway – one of the world’s largest systems with 420 stations and more than 30 lines – water poured down the steps and through the ceilings of some stations.
Some lines were suspended entirely, and many stations were closed. Some bus routes slowed to a crawl, trapping riders for hours. Officials warned some New Yorkers to avoid travelling unless they were fleeing a flooded area.
Floodwaters marooned vehicles on streets and poured into subway stations, disrupting the journeys of millions of commuters.
The rain capped one of New York’s wettest Septembers on record, with 34.9cm of rain falling during the month as of 11am on Friday, and more on the way, said Dominic Ramunni, a National Weather Service forecaster. The all-time high was set in 1882 when 42.72cm fell in September.
It was the rainiest day at the city’s John F Kennedy International Airport since records began in 1948, the New York office of the National Weather Service said, citing preliminary data.
LaGuardia airport closed down one of its terminals, with social media images showing passengers walking through water well above the tops of their shoes.
Despite the warnings, the city’s public schools were open for the day. Some buildings experienced flooding but no operations were affected, a district spokesperson said.
At least one suburban district, Bronxville just north of New York, dismissed students early because of the worsening flooding.
Governor Hochul said it was crucial to get the subway back up running, because many children rely on it to get to and from school – to the ire of parents who wondered why schools were open in the first place, with many children who made it to their classrooms amid the downpour now stuck there.
New York City Mayor Adams, whose office issued a “travel advisory” late on Thursday night, defended his administration’s response at a press conference on Friday saying that “all of the necessary precautions were taken”.
In neighboring New Jersey, low-lying Hoboken, a city directly across the Hudson River from lower Manhattan, declared a state of emergency, with all but one of the southern routes into town under water.
Hoboken’s newly installed floodgates, designed to close automatically when water pooled on roadways, were down, blocking many streets to vehicular traffic.
Friday’s deluge followed a bout of heavy downpours and strong winds last weekend from the remnants of Tropical Storm Ophelia. That storm soaked New York City and caused widespread power outages in North Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
In New York, intermittent rain this week further saturated the ground, setting up conditions conducive to flash flooding. — NNN-AGENCIES
