Record Rainfall Floods New York City -- Today!

Friday’s rainfall in New York broke records. Here is the latest. [to see small photos enlarged right click on them to open in new tab]

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.

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 basements 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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

And parents’ frustrations only mounted throughout the day, as dismissal approached and the myriad transit disruptions threatened to strand their children in different neighborhoods or boroughs.

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 basement 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.”

Friday morning, Joy Wong plugged a pump into a wall in her house in Woodside, Queens, as her basement filled with water. Her desperation was all too familiar — three neighbors, including a toddler, had drowned in that very basement when Ida hit New York two years ago. “I’m experiencing PTSD right now,” she said.

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 worst of the rain will leave Manhattan in the next few hours as the storm gradually heads 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 and Christopher Maag contributed reporting.

[Top: screenshot from video - See original at article link]