New York,rain would match the March record set in 1983.
Posted on: March 31, 2010
In New York, the National Weather Service said that as of 11 a.m., another 0.64 of an inch of rain would match the March record set in 1983.
A wind-driven deluge broke rainfall records across the Northeast on Tuesday, flooding roads and basements almost as quickly as it snapped umbrellas inside out, and compounding the lingering damage from a storm two weeks ago.
Officials mobilized National Guard soldiers in hard-hit areas of Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island.
In Massachusetts, Gov. Deval Patrick declared a state of emergency as rivers rose toward flood stage. On Long Island, crews rushed to shore up beaches chewed up by erosion.
Weather forecasters said the storm made this the wettest March on record in many places, including Boston, Newark and Queens. The National Weather Service said the March total had reached 10.63 inches in Central Park by Tuesday evening, beating the record set in 1983.
“Is it annoying? Yes,” said Walter Johnsen, a perfumer who was walking his English mastiff in the West Village. “Would I like it to stop? Yes.”
It was a day for angry-looking colors on television weather maps, big swirls of yellows and reds that descended on an already storm-soaked region. It was a day when patients canceled their doctors’ appointments because they could not find vacant cabs, a day when tourists complained there was nothing to see from the top of 30 Rockefeller Center, when New Yorkers wondered if they had somehow woken up on the wrong coast.
“I feel like I’m in Seattle — it rains every day,” said Fabian Rios, who said he had given up on umbrellas after having two $5 ones and two $15 ones destroyed in the last couple of months.
It was a day when the weather supersized everything: the fierce surf pounding the beaches on Long Island came with Hawaii-size waves, and inland, everything that had to do with water grew as the steel-gray day went on. Puddles morphed into ponds, ponds became little lakes, lakes were transformed into rivers in the streets — and the rivers in the region spilled over their banks, just as they had earlier in the month when a punishing Northeaster barreled through.
In low-lying areas, streets seemed passable only in kayaks. But the storm even soaked areas where soggy basements are a rarity, in part because the ground was already waterlogged from earlier storms. Along New York Avenue in Huntington, on Long Island, water spurted out of manhole covers like little geysers.
The Interstate 95 corridor between Boston and New York was a particular concern, especially in Rhode Island, where some state roads were already closed.
In Manhattan, commuters high-stepped their way through subway stations where rainwater cascaded down the stairs, and a mudslide on the tracks delayed some Metro-North trains in the Bronx.
Westchester County drivers crept through hubcap-high water, and the police rescued a 77-year-old man who drove onto a stretch of the Bronx River Parkway in Yonkers that had been closed because it had flooded. A police spokesman said the man, identified as Riccardo Tedesco, “hit a wall of water” and, in seconds, his pickup truck was submerged.
In Connecticut, Gov. M. Jodi Rell said that a state of emergency from a storm earlier in the month remained in effect. This time, she said, “relentless rain has created extremely dangerous situations,” and she ordered 150 Connecticut National Guard troops to assist with flood control. She also directed all available state troopers to help with road closings.
Train service on a stretch of the Staten Island Railway was suspended when the tracks flooded, and the beach at Robert Moses State Park was underwater at high tide. Ronald F. Foley, director of the Long Island Region of New York State Parks, said that crews were concentrating on hauling sand to submerged beaches farther east, toward Fire Island.
“Our goal was to haul 20,000 cubic yards in there,” he said, “but it was a slower process than we thought it would be.” He estimated that the crews had delivered 5,000 cubic yards.
With high winds reported through the day, officials said there were delays at the major airports in the New York area, and it was slow going on wind-tossed roads. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey reduced the speed limit on three bridges between Staten Island and New Jersey to 35 miles an hour.
“This is a mess,” said Tom Kines, a meteorologist with AccuWeather in State College, Pa. “Some places are going to get almost two months’ worth of rain out of this system, but in 72 hours.”
In Manhattan, people scavenged trash cans for usable umbrellas. Patrick Ward, a dancer with the Joffrey Ballet, was checking a Trash Can on Seventh Avenue and describing the loss of three umbrellas to the wind this year. They were the $5 kind. He said he was saving up for a better one and hoping to find a still-usable castoff — broken, but not broken enough to be useless.
T. J. Jaye, a package deliverer, wore his rainy-day uniform: a plastic shopping bag over his Mets cap and a plastic garbage bag over his torso. He said he used to wear one like a skirt, until he saw himself in the mirror.
But tourists like Said El Bohdidi, from Spain, took the weather in stride. He and a friend, Carmen López, had booked several open-top bus tours and had to cancel them. But they went ahead with their plans to go to the Top of the Rock, the observation deck at 30 Rockefeller Center, and take pictures of the Empire State Building in the distance.
The Empire State Building was all there — the antenna that broadcasts radio signals, the observation deck that has been in the movies, the 6,500 windows that have to be washed — but they could not see it. The clouds were too low and too thick.
Mr. El Bohdidi said he did not mind. “If you want a nice picture,” he said, “you can take it from the Internet.”
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