Flooding in New York: Rain Eases, but Officials Warn That Flood Risks Remain (2024)

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Friday’s rainfall in New York broke records. Here is the latest.

Citywide cellphone pings pushed alerts from the National Weather Service throughout the day, repeatedly extending a “considerable” flash-flood warning, a level reserved for extreme and rare rainfall events.

The warning remained in effect through the evening, and the governor cautioned at a news conference against driving despite a lull in the storm. The rain was unpredictable, she said, and it wasn’t entirely clear what areas would be hardest hit overnight.

Throughout the day, cascading waterfalls shut down subway lines across much of the city, with service being halted even at major hubs like Barclays Center. Trains were rerouted with little warning.

“I have no idea what’s happening,” one subway conductor said as her Q train moved onto the E line. “I don’t know where we’re going.”

Commuters turned and ventured back home on foot through scenes of chaos and upheaval.

Water gushed into brownstone basem*nts in Park Slope. In Prospect Park, the landscape was altered by new creeks. In Queens, the storm was generational, making Friday the wettest day at Kennedy International Airport since modern record-keeping began.

The streets in Windsor Terrace in Brooklyn, a neighborhood built on the slant of a hill, were engulfed in minutes in currents dotted with whitecaps, just as schools were opening their doors. Boys and girls slogged through deep water on 11th Avenue to reach their elementary school classes while neighbors with rakes tried to clear storm drains of dense fallen leaves.

“No children are in danger as far as we know,” the governor said. But some schools asked parents to return during the storm to pick up their children, which school officials later said was “precisely the wrong thing to do.”

“Truthfully, holding school today knowing this was coming feels irresponsible,” said Jessamyn Lee, a Brooklyn parent of two.

By the end of the day, the overall attendance rate at public schools fell to roughly 77 percent, after hovering around 90 percent earlier this week. Several dozen schools across Brooklyn in particular saw more than 4 in 10 students absent.

The sense that city leaders were largely caught off guard promised to linger after the rain had stopped falling. Mayor Adams was swiftly criticized for not warning residents about the storm soon enough, and for waiting to address New Yorkers until noontime Friday.

Scenes both placid and fraught played out in the city, depending on how hard the rain was falling. Waist-high rivers appeared beneath arched bridges in Central Park. A man in a drenched business suit leaned on a fence by the Great Lawn, and removed his boots one at a time to empty them of water.

In Prospect Heights, Brooklyn, a large tree fell, pulling its roots up through a sidewalk and cleaving a parked Nissan. In Windsor Terrace, Bryn Knowles, a former city parks employee in Lake Oswego, Ore., felt her instincts from that rain-soaked region kick in. She picked up a rake and went out to a blocked drain on the corner.

“Every major rain event, all the city workers would drop all their tasks, grab their rakes and go and clear storm drains,” she said. “It’s fun — it’s instant gratification, it helps people.”

Attention immediately turned to residents who live in flood zones, two years after the remnants of Hurricane Ida caused basem*nt floods that killed 11 people in Queens. Many of those apartments, which are often rented to immigrants or others desperate for an affordable place to live, are not allowed to be rented legally and do not have adequate means of escape in a flood.

“Plan your escape route,” Ms. Hochul said. “Don’t wait until water is over your knees before you leave. Don’t wait until it’s too late.”

The rain on Friday made this the second-wettest September in New York City history, according to National Weather Service statistics: More than a foot of rain — over 14 inches — has fallen this month, the most in more than 140 years, when the city logged 16.85 inches in September 1882.

The storm created havoc for the busiest streets and highways, flooding parts of the F.D.R. Drive and closing down the Belt Parkway. Many flights were canceled or delayed at Kennedy and La Guardia.

Over the next few hours, the storm will gradually head east, said Dominic Ramunni, a Weather Service meteorologist. “We’ve got Manhattan on the western edge of it now, with the heaviest rain over Queens and western Nassau County,” he said. But he added, “We’re still dealing with it: We still have that fire hose of moisture coming on shore.”

In the Central Park Zoo, the storm brought about an escape: The water rose so high that a female sea lion, named Sally, was able to breach her pool and venture out. She did not get far, with the zoo locked down and employees watching her carefully.

Like many New Yorkers on Friday, Sally decided she was better off at home.

“She explored the area before returning to the familiar surroundings of the pool,” said Jim Breheny, an executive with the Wildlife Conservation Society, “and the company of the other two sea lions.”

Mihir Zaveri, Emma Fitzsimmons, Luis Ferré-Sadurní, Andy Newman , Christopher Maag and Troy Closson contributed reporting.

The storm scrambles Sukkot plans, but Jews make room indoors.

“According to Jewish law, there is no requirement to eat in the sukkah if the rain would be too uncomfortable,” he said. “Today’s weather certainly qualifies for that exemption.”

As deep waters stalled buses and trains, and rain pounded the city, congregations adapted. Some brought sukkahs indoors. Others prepared for more guests than planned, taking in people whose sukkahs had flooded.

“The weather we’re experiencing is a reminder of precisely what Sukkot comes to teach — that life is precarious and unpredictable,” said Rabbi Michelle Dardashti of Kane Street Synagogue in Brooklyn’s Cobble Hill neighborhood.

The synagogue postponed plans to decorate and celebrate in a sukkah and canceled Friday evening services. “We don’t want anyone risking harm in traveling to the synagogue for these events,” Rabbi Dardashti said.

The Manhattan branch of the Romemu congregation, on the Upper West Side, moved its dinner inside. Sukkot lasts a week, and every day from 5:30 p.m. to 9 p.m., anyone can attend, including if their own sukkah has been damaged, Debra Passner, a spokeswoman, said.

“It’s joy amidst vulnerability,” Rabbi David Ingber, Romemu’s founding rabbi and the senior director of the Bronfman Center for Jewish Life at the 92nd Street Y, New York, said of the holiday. “It’s a recognition of blessing amidst contingency and fragility. Those are all interwoven in Sukkot.”

On Friday morning, Sarah Schecker, 26, raced to the Greenpoint Shul, in Brooklyn.

The congregation had canceled outdoor programming for Friday night. When Ms. Schecker opened the door, she saw three inches of standing water. There went Plan B.

She hustled to move sacred texts and old pictures to higher ground, and then went outside to clear the debris from an exterior drain.

Then, she started to cook: “I guess that means dinner at my house,” she said.

Surrounded by puddles of water, she cooked a meal for 40 people in the synagogue’s kitchen. Green beans sizzled. Chicken roasted. The smell of garlic and onion filled the air, masking the musty odor of the seeping water as she prepared her mother’s rosemary mushroom potato recipe.

But by Friday afternoon, the elevators at her apartment building had stopped working. She lives on the 14th floor. So she and others in the congregation went to Plan D: dinner at another member’s apartment in a brownstone building that the group jokingly calls the “Greenpoint Shtetl,” because Greenpoint Shul members live in all three of the building’s apartments.

Except the last-minute host, Dr. Judah Fierstein, had just landed in Chicago on one of the few flights to leave New York on time Friday.

“Sarah promised that she’s going to leave it in better shape than she found it, and I didn’t leave it in great shape to begin with,” Dr. Fierstein, 48, said, speaking over the phone while waiting for a cab in Chicago. “I wasn’t expecting 40 people to come over. But what are you going to do? It’s just a crazy day. I can’t really say no.”

Larry Drucker, a member of the Greenpoint Shul’s board of trustees, noted that precipitation is part of the daily prayers: From Passover through most of Sukkot, observant Jews pray for dew, he said. At the end of the holiday, the prayers change, and Jews start praying for rain.

“So we really can’t complain,” Mr. Drucker said, laughing. He added: “It’s something we ask for.”

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What to expect in New York City tonight: unpredictable rain and possibly more flooding.

Later at a news conference, the governor cautioned against driving in any part of the city. The rain was unpredictable, she said, and it wasn’t entirely clear what areas would be hardest hit overnight.

A flood watch remains in effect through late tonight, with the possibility of “considerable and life threatening” flash flooding in New York City, as well as surrounding areas, including parts of southern Connecticut, northeastern New Jersey and Long Island, according to the National Weather Service.

Through the night, the storm is expected to shift eastward to Long Island, and the M.T.A. cautioned Long Island Railroad riders to expect cancellations and delays during the evening commute.

Ms. Hochul said at a news conference that Westchester County was starting to experience serious rain, expanding the storm’s scope beyond the five boroughs and Long Island. New York was on track to see 10 inches of rainfall over 24 hours; the last time the area had this much rain was in 1955, and that was over a two-day period, she said, describing the rainfall as “Hurricane Ida-level waters.”

By the end of the day, New York City will have received as much rain as it usually does over a three-month span, said Janno Lieber, the chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Mayor Eric Adams said in an interview with CBS News around 5 p.m. that no fatalities had been reported.

The severity of the storm depended not only on the volume of rainfall, but also on how long it lingered over the region. The storm was “slow moving,” according to the National Weather Service, making flooding more likely. By Friday evening, the Bronx River had reached 4.9 feet, and was at risk of breaching its banks.

“It is not finished yet — there is more rain on the way,” Ms. Hochul said at the news conference. “The loss of life comes when people get in their vehicles.”

What New York homeowners and renters should know about flood insurance.

It may be too late for residents of New York City and the surrounding area to buy policies to cover damages caused by the torrential rains that flooded the region on Friday, but more people may want to consider getting such policies for their future protection: A quarter of flood claims arise from properties that are outside high-risk areas, according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency, but most homeowners in those areas are eligible for lower rates.

Most flood policies in the United States are issued through the federal National Flood Insurance Program, which is managed by the emergency management agency, although coverage is also available in certain areas from private insurers, like Lloyd’s of London. (For more details, read my colleague Ann Carrns’s piece on flood insurance.)

Consumers should buy enough coverage to enable them to replace their assets in the event of a total loss, according to the advocacy group United Policyholders. But the national program has relatively low coverage limits: $250,000 for a residential building, and $100,000 for its contents (which is also available to renters).

Private flood policies can offer much higher coverage limits, as well as extra benefits, like “loss of use,” which pays lodging costs if your property is uninhabitable. But private insurers don’t have to offer any coverage if they deem a location too risky. And even if they extend coverage, it may be pricey. They can also decide not to renew a policy after a home experiences a flood.

If you are interested in buying coverage through the national program, you may have to wait: A shutdown of the federal government, which could happen Sunday morning, could cause the program to run out of money until Congress reaches an agreement to keep the government funded.

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In Mamaroneck, boats and tractors rescued people and a dog named Mocha.

They are without homeowner’s insurance, and Mr. Portillo recalled that after Hurricane Ida, it took his family members four months to get back to their home.

“It’s the same thing,” Mr. Portillo said as he watched motorized rescue rafts float through what had been a grassy park just hours before. “We’ll figure it out. We’ll get back.”

Thomas Murphy, the mayor of Mamaroneck, oversaw rescue efforts at the worst-hit location, at the confluence of the Sheldrake and Mamaroneck rivers near the town’s Metro North train station. By 3 p.m., many residents, and at least one dog, had already been ferried out by front-end loaders and rafts. Wendy Maldonado, who lives on Center Avenue, could not reach her apartment because the street was underwater. She gave keys to workers in a front-end loader, who rescued her dog, Mocha, and reunited them on the street.

“I have no words to describe how happy and thankful I am,” she said as the dog wagged its tail and shook off the rain.

Mr. Murphy said the town’s police, fire, emergency services and public works departments had all been mobilized, along with Westchester County crews. He said dozens of streets had been closed and children from a local elementary school along Mamaroneck Avenue had been cut off from parents arriving from the western side of the street. The students were taken by rescue workers to the town’s courthouse for parents to pick them up there.

“It’s awful, but unfortunately we’ve seen worse,” Mr. Murphy said. “It tries our patience, but we are a resilient bunch. As soon as the last raindrop falls, we begin rebuilding.”

Hoboken, much of which sits below sea level, has a long history of flooding, the mayor noted, and the city has made infrastructure improvements in recent years to mitigate the frequency and severity of floods. But when rain falls as hard and as quickly as it did on Friday morning, flooding is “inevitable,” he said.

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If your car floods, don’t get in it. Call your insurance company.

Two people had already towed their vehicles to her shop, Ms. Zhunio said. If you don’t start your car or try to drive it, it’s more likely that the car can be saved, she said, adding that it’s best to call your insurance company for advice.

But be ready for bad news. “You can never really fix flooded cars,” said Chris Eid, owner of L & B Auto Repair in the Greenwood Heights area of Brooklyn. “There’s always going to be little electrical gremlins and stuff like that.”

Models less than 12 or 13 years old are especially likely to have problems with their electrical systems after water exposure, Mr. Eid said.

Matt Gleason at United Auto Repair, on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, agreed. Once a car’s electronics get soaked, he said, they’re never the same.

“There are like 20 electronic computers inside of the car,” Mr. Gleason said. “Even if you dry them out, they may work, but you’ll have different issues down the road.”

Older cars are easier to fix because there are fewer electrical components, but Ms. Zhunio noted that some people would rather get a new car than deal with the hassle of repair.

The last time Mr. Eid’s auto shop in Brooklyn was inundated with flooded cars was in September 2021, after Hurricane Ida, he said. He expects to see tow trucks lining up outside tomorrow morning, even though there’s not much he can do. He said a flooded car is as bad as a car totaled in a crash.

“You might as well junk your car, at that point,” Mr. Eid said, adding that if you have full insurance coverage, your car will be treated as if it were totaled and you will be paid accordingly. “Water damage beyond repair? That’s it.”

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Bautista is one of two tenants left in a building that is collapsing from water damage. She said mushrooms grow on the ceiling of her neighbor’s apartment, and mold grows on her clothing. Her block is impassable, she said. Her 5-year-old son's school bus did not stop there this morning, so he stayed home. They have to wade to another street to pick up food deliveries. She said the water was so high it got into her rain boots. “We are shut in here,” she said. “No one’s leaving this house.”

A sea lion escaped from her enclosure when the Central Park Zoo flooded.

By 3 p.m., the water at the zoo had receded, and all animals were contained in their enclosures, Mr. Breheny said. No staff members were in danger during the storm, and the city’s four zoos were closed so that employees could focus on keeping animals safe.

For Karen Dugan and her colleagues at the city’s parks department, the roving sea lion made for a rare sight from their third-floor offices in the agency’s headquarters at the Arsenal, a building inside the park that overlooks the zoo.

“When we got to the Arsenal, everything was pretty flooded,” she said. “We watched it explore around the enclosure and then go back in.”

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Inside tent shelters built for migrants, water dripped on beds and puddles formed on the floor.

Videos and photos taken Friday by people staying in both women’s and men’s tents on the island show water coming in, some small puddles on the floor, and rain dripping onto the cots where people sleep. Some cots have tarps on them, but others do not, and are getting wet.

Tent dormitories were erected on the island — an expanse of playing fields and institutional buildings off the coast of Manhattan — and in the parking lot of a state psychiatric hospital in Queens, to house some of the tens of thousands of migrants who have arrived in the city since last year. The tents house only adults without children. Families with children are staying at other locations, mostly hotels.

In one video, taken in a women’s tent on Randall’s Island, someone can be heard yelling “El agua!” as water infiltrates her possessions. The woman who shot the video, who would not allow her name to be published citing a fear of reprisals, said the rain had been coming in all day. A spokeswoman for Mayor Eric Adams said the city was addressing the issue.

Anyone hoping to get a bus off Randall’s Island to take refuge elsewhere was out of luck; the M35, which connects it to Manhattan, was suspended because of flooding on the island, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Flooding and potential flooding at migrant tent cities has been a persistent concern since the city started building them last year. The city dismantled the first tented dormitory it put up, at Orchard Beach in the Bronx, after a rainstorm of less than an inch flooded it last October.

At Floyd Bennett Field, a former airport in Brooklyn where the city plans to erect another tent complex, there were inches of standing water on the roads, which could be seen in a video posted this morning by City Councilwoman Joann Ariola on X, formerly known as Twitter.

“This isn’t even a tropical storm,” she wrote. “What will happen if a hurricane comes through?

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The rain has wreaked havoc on the city’s mass transit system.

Gov. Kathy Hochul called the bad weather a “life-threatening rainfall event,” as transit officials urged riders to stay home.

“There’s children who use the subway to get home from school,” Ms. Hochul said during a news conference. “People need to be able to know if they can get home from work. And so that is priority No. 1: that our subways and our rail systems are safe.”

About half of all subway lines were either fully or partially suspended because of the rain. Service on the Metro-North Railroad, the commuter line connecting New York to its northern suburbs, was also badly affected. Travel in and out of Grand Central Terminal — the railroad’s main hub — was suspended because water had submerged the system’s electrified third rail network in the Bronx. Janno Lieber, the chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, urged passengers to consider the bus system because it was fully operational aside from some delays.

Still, in Queens, a bus station worker told a group of travelers that flooding around La Guardia Airport was slowing trips by up to 30 minutes at a busy nearby bus stop in Jackson Heights. Chris Buzan, visiting from Phoenix with his wife, Kim, and two sons, hoped they could make their flight home.

“Fingers crossed,” Mr. Buzan said. When the bus finally arrived, several minutes later, the Buzans managed to squeeze in, but other travelers had no choice but to stay behind.

Train crews scrambled to adjust service as heavy rain flooded the Canal Street station in Lower Manhattan, while in Brooklyn it submerged the tracks at President Street and Seventh Avenue. Major train lines that crisscross the city were cut off or delayed. There was no 2, 3, 4 or 5 train service in Brooklyn, and the B and G train lines were suspended, among other service interruptions.

In Brooklyn, some subway station entrances were blocked off with yellow caution tape. Crowded Manhattan-bound Q trains were stalled at stations as passengers squeezed in, with some travelers enduring commutes that had stretched hours longer than usual.

Aissatou Diallo, 18, said she had no choice but to wait at the Prospect Park station in Brooklyn, because she needed to get to a class at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy, on the West Side of Manhattan. “Everyone is squished,” Ms. Diallo said. “It’s better to be late than not show up at all.”

Andrew Keh, Hurubie Meko, Zeke Minaya and Joseph Goldstein contributed reporting.

Climate change is bringing more rain to New York, and the city is not ready.

“Overall, we are not prepared for a future with increasingly extreme heavy precipitation events, especially in areas with aging infrastructure and lack of appropriate early warning systems,” he said.

When rain occurs in a concentrated burst as opposed to a daylong event, he said, parts of the city, especially those with dips and bends and covered with impermeable materials that can’t absorb the water, are particularly vulnerable to flooding. “People forget that New York City has topography,” he said. New York’s poorest neighborhoods, which can lack even outdated infrastructure, are especially vulnerable, he added.

The combination of “poor drainage plus imperviousness of the surfaces and intense rainfall from the sky” tends to affect neighborhoods that are unlike coastal flooding zones, although there is some crossover, said Mr. Kruczkiewicz, who said he is closely monitoring vulnerable communities in the Bronx and Central Queens as the rain continues.

“This precipitation event is different from other events we’ve seen this month,” he said. “What we are seeing today is more rain, in a shortened period of time,” he explained, referring to the nearly four inches of rain that fell in just three hours in Central Park this morning. “We have not seen that level of intensity this month, and that’s why we are experiencing flash floods this time around.”

Mr. Kruczkiewicz said the challenge in dealing with the increased likelihood of storms will be communicating the risk of flash floods before they happen. “Early warning is not enough, we need action plans,” he said.

In 1882, almost 17 inches of rain fell during September in New York City, establishing the historical high, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

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The Weather Service has also added a flash flood warning for Suffolk County, effective until 6:45 p.m.

“I can’t take any more of it; I’m just tired,” said Layne, who had abandoned her plans to attend a business convention in Houston. She plans to catch a bus, and then a train, back to her apartment in East Flatbush, Brooklyn. But Abrantes, who traveled from Manchester, England, for the same convention, was still weighing options.

“I was so looking forward to this event,” Abrantes said. “I spent so much for my gowns to this gala.” She hadn’t decided whether driving to New Jersey was worth it on Friday afternoon. Either way, Abrantes expects she’ll spend another night in the airport while she sorts out her plans.

This is why New York City keeps flooding.

“This changing weather pattern is the result of climate change, and the sad reality is our climate is changing faster than our infrastructure can respond,” said Rohit Aggarwala, commissioner of the New York City Department of Environmental Protection.

The rush-hour downpour on Friday overwhelmed the 7,400 miles of pipes that carry storm water and sewage under the city’s hard surfaces to treatment plants or into the nearest rivers and bays. The runoff backed up into the streets, causing flooding that swamped cars and seeped into basem*nts and subway stations in Brooklyn and Queens.

The scenes of water rushing over roads and sidewalks were similar to those in 2021 when Hurricane Ida inundated the city and left 11 people dead in Queens. That storm was a warning sign, said Daniel A. Zarrilli, a special adviser to Columbia University on the institution’s climate and sustainability practices.

“We’re in this new territory where we’re seeing higher intensity rainfalls like this,” said Mr. Zarrilli, a former climate policy adviser to the mayor. “Once you’ve exceeded the capacity of the sewers themselves, that’s what causes these backups. When the pipes can’t handle it, it backs up.”

About 60 percent of New York City has a drainage system that combines storm runoff with sewage in the same pipes. When the flow through those pipes is more than double what the sewage treatment plants were designed to handle, the excess — a mix of rain and untreated sewage — goes straight into local waterways like the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn, the East River or Jamaica Bay.

But as the sewer system backs up, some of that untreated wastewater winds up in the basem*nts of homes and businesses around the city, said Dave Balkan, who runs Balkan Sewer & Water Main Service in the Richmond Hill section of Queens.

“When it gets inundated to this degree, it backflows,” Mr. Balkan said. “That’s when regular people start having sewer water bursting out of their drains or their basem*nt toilets.”

His company was “getting tons of calls” from distressed and disgusted homeowners on Friday. He said he responded as a courtesy, but “at the time it’s happening, there’s nothing you can do for them.”

They just have to wait for the system to clear and pull the muck back through the pipes, Mr. Balkan said. He was reluctant to estimate how long that would take because the storm had lasted so long.

“Usually we get a flash storm, but it’s kind of been raining all week,” he said. “This is an event.”

Solving the city’s growing problems with storm water will require “a lot of investment in infrastructure and a lot of creativity,” Mr. Zarrilli said.

A 2021 report from the city called “The New Normal” estimated that “recalibrating our sewers for storms like Ida” would take decades and cost $100 billion. Upgrading the system in Southeast Queens alone cost $2 billion, it noted.

In the meantime, the city has been working with federal officials to create some places for the excess water to go, other than straight into the sewer system, and potentially into the waterways, said Ben Furnas, a former director of the Mayor’s Office of Climate and Sustainability who is now executive director of the 2030 Project at Cornell University.

“There are lots of strategies to make a place for the water to go and be stored so it doesn’t end up tipping off into the creeks or canals,” Mr. Furnas said. He said significant investments had been made in “gray infrastructure” like large holding tanks and “green infrastructure” like gardens set in sidewalks that can absorb some of the rainwater.

“It’s a really challenging problem to solve because we have this legacy infrastructure system and its capacity is being exceeded,” said Franco Montalto, a flooding expert and engineer. “You can either manage excess water underground or you manage it on the surface.”

Dr. Montalto cited an initiative in Copenhagen, where officials redesigned streets to hold water temporarily. Certain intersections, he explained, are depressed or sunken, to draw water away from neighborhoods and allow it to pool at a depth that is safe for cars to pass through. Eventually, the water runs off into parks and other green spaces.

Upmanu Lall, an engineer and the director of the Columbia Water Center, said he would like to see more pumps installed in the city’s sewer system to move excess water and prevent overflows. “We have limited capacity to discharge the water, which leads to more possibility for internal flooding,” he said.

Candace Agonafir, who conducts research with Dr. Lall, said one factor in the disastrous flooding during Hurricane Ida was the accumulation of trash and other debris that blocked the rain from getting into the sewers.

Dr. Agonafir was part of a study that looked at flooding in the city through 311 complaints. It found that “for an appreciable number of ZIP codes, infrastructural complaints were found to be predictors of street flooding complaints.”

And one way to address it, the study noted, involved “improving the internal and external components of the drainage network” to “reduce some of the physical and economic impacts of street flooding in metropolitan areas.”