Very heavy rain that fell in the northeastern United States overnight from Thursday to Friday flooded streets in New York and partially paralyzed subways and airports. Authorities urged the population to exercise extreme caution.
New York State Governor Kathy Hochul stated on X (ex-Twitter).
Images reported by AFP journalists, local media and social networks showed vehicles struggling to move on flooded roads or even completely blocked as water rose to the level of car windows.
Several stations on the megacity’s gigantic subway network have been partially flooded and several central lines in Brooklyn are closed: “We continue to evacuate water on the tracks caused by flooding in several stations in Brooklyn and Manhattan,” says X . the official report of the New York subway.
For its part, La Guardia Airport announced that all entrances to Terminal A are “currently closed”.
New York Democratic Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said in an email to her constituents that 2 to 5 inches of rain fell in the boroughs of Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn, with an additional 1 to 3 inches depending on the area be reckoned with.
According to the US Weather Service, the severe weather is caused by a low pressure system along the Mid-Atlantic coast that is drawing in moist air from the ocean and “producing areas of heavy rain over the northern and eastern regions.”
These floods are taken seriously by the authorities of New York, where Hurricane Ida in September 2021 caused the death of 13 people (and several dozen more in the region), most of them trapped in basements of houses converted into apartments, in a megacity struggling for survival with a severe housing shortage.