Very heavy rain fell during the night of Thursday September 28 to Friday September 29 in the northeast of the United States, causing flooding in New York, where part of the subway and airports were paralyzed.
New York State Governor Kathy Hochul declared a “state of emergency” for New York, Long Island, east of the megacity, and the Hudson Valley, due to ” extreme precipitation we are seeing,” she announced on X (formerly Twitter). Here is the risk area affected by the “flash flood”, according to local authorities:
Images reported by journalists from Agence France-Presse, local media, and on social networks showed vehicles traveling with difficulty on flooded roads, or even completely blocked with water rising up to the level of the windows of the cars.
Several stations of the megacity’s gigantic subway system have been partially flooded and several central lines are closed in Brooklyn: “We continue to manage water on the tracks caused by flooding in several stations in Brooklyn and Manhattan”, reported on X the official account of the New York subway. La Guardia Airport announced, for its part, that all access to Terminal A was “currently closed”.
“Up to 20 centimeters of precipitation by the end of the day”
The city’s mayor, Eric Adams, warned during a press conference that the rains would continue throughout the day. “We can expect up to 20 centimeters of precipitation by the end of the day,” he warned. The New York Democratic congresswoman, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, announced in an email to her constituents that 5 to 12 centimeters of rain had fallen in the boroughs of Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn, with 2, 5 to 7 centimeters still expected depending on the area.
According to the U.S. Weather Service, the severe weather is caused by a low pressure system along the Atlantic coast, which draws moist air from the ocean, “producing areas of heavy rain over northern and eastern regions.” These floods are taken seriously by the authorities of New York, where Hurricane Ida caused the death of thirteen people in September 2021 (and several dozen others in the region), most of them trapped in basements. of houses transformed into apartments in a megacity struggling with a severe housing crisis.