New York City came to a standstill last week after intense rainfall caused flash flooding across much of the city.
Almost 8 inches of rain fell on JFK Airport on Friday, the most rainfall in one day since record-keeping began in 1948, while CNN reports that Brooklyn got a month’s worth of rain in just a few hours.
Much of the city’s subway services were suspended, leaving the 2.4 million daily riders across the five boroughs stranded during morning commutes; while firefighters performed some rescues of people in basement apartments, no fatalities have yet been reported.
More intense storms and higher rainfall totals are a sign of climate change, as warmer air can hold more moisture.
Some important provisions that would keep New Yorkers living in illegal basement apartments safe—set in motion after 11 New Yorkers drowned during Hurricane Ida in 2021, trapped in their own homes—got stuck in the NY state Assembly earlier this year, and advocates say more needs to be done to keep the city safe during flash floods.
Louise Yeung, the comptroller’s chief climate officer, told MSNBC in an interview that “Heavy rainstorms like the one we are seeing today are becoming our new normal as climate change intensifies…We are not fixing things at the pace our climate is changing and that’s going to continue to be a challenge every time we get one of these rain storms or hurricanes.”
(CNN, New York Times $, Reuters, NBC, BBC, Scientific American, The Independent, The Atlantic, The Verge, Vox, The Messenger, New York Post, New Republic: Kate Aronoff column $)