New York City And Northeast Brace for Flooding Rains From Weekend Storm

New York City and the Northeast are in the crosshairs of a massive coastal storm that’s poised to bring high winds, surging tides and heavy rain throughout the region starting Sunday.

Drenching rain and strong winds will likely arrive in New York on Sunday as the storm develops off the coast this weekend, said Bob Oravec, a senior branch forecaster with the U.S. Weather Prediction Center.

Coastal flood watches are in effect from Sunday morning through Monday afternoon for New York and Long Island, as well as southern Connecticut and parts of New Jersey. At the Battery in Manhattan, tides may reach 3.7 feet (1.1 meters) above normal early Monday, the weather service said.

While the storm won’t be a tropical system, it will still be “highly impactful,” Oravec said.

These large storms can spawn widespread power outages from high winds, erode coastal areas as tides rise beyond normal levels and tie up ground and air transport throughout the most densely populated regions of the U.S. With the storm lingering into Monday and Tuesday across the Northeast, it’s likely that its effects will still be felt as the work week begins.

Coastal areas from Maine to South Carolina may get from 2 to 4 inches of rain through the weekend into next week, according to the Weather Prediction Center. There’s also a chance of excessive rain from Boston to Cape Hatteras in North Carolina Sunday into Monday.

Along with the heavy rain, starting in Manhattan on Sunday afternoon and continuing through the next morning, there will be wind gusts up to 60 miles per hour along the shoreline.

The upside of the storm is that it will bring much needed-rain to Mid-Atlantic and Northeast states, Oravec said.

Across New York, nearly 66% of the land is in drought, while neighboring New England, Vermont, Maine and New Hampshire are completely parched. The US Southeast is more than 45% covered by drought.

“The one upside is that is going to bring some rain,” Oravec said.

For New York, the worst of the storm should be over by Monday and the system will be moving away from the Northeast by Tuesday.

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Flood
New York
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