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Interesting article. It needs to be addressed because heavy rainfall is becoming increasingly more & more common.
“This is a teachable moment,” said Lisa Daglian, executive director of the Permanent Citizens Advisory Committee to the MTA. “Unfortunately, teachable moments tend to come from other people’s misery.”
Even on a dry day, the MTA says it pumps 14 million gallons of water out of subway stations.
But on Thursday, as a month’s worth of rain deluged the city inside of two hours, the vulnerability of the subway went on full display in videos of commuters wading waist-deep into pool-like stations.
The Dyckman Street station on the A line in Inwood took on 28,000 gallons of water, the MTA said, while the B and D line’s Tremont Avenue stop in The Bronx was flooded by 15,000 gallons.
“If the rain is coming down at 100 gallons a minute and the pumps are 50 gallons a minute, you’ve lost the battle,” said Robert Paaswell, a distinguished professor of engineering at the City College of New York.
The sudden soaking of stations in Upper Manhattan and The Bronx, which typically do not experience heavy flooding, underscored the exposure of a nearly 117-year-old subway system not built for the extreme weather wrought by climate change.
Flooding shows risks to city posed by increasing storm deluges
Cars crawling through a foot of water on the Harlem River Drive. Straphangers wading through chest-high pools to get from subway platform to stairway. Water racing down Dyckman Street and pooling along Broadway in Upper Manhattan.
Several inches of rain dropped on parts of New York City Thursday evening, overwhelming the drainage system in those areas, which led to flooding and outflows of sewage into city rivers.
Flooding caused by rainstorms is not new to New York City, Rosenzweig said, but what is new is the increasing frequency, caused by climate change. Climate change is making the atmosphere warmer, she said, meaning the air will hold more and more moisture. Longer and more intense hurricane seasons as well will mean more storms of this type. Cloudbursts typically release enough rain to overwhelm just about any city, not just New York, she added.
Flooding caused by sea level rise — coastal flooding — has been the main focus of both government and residents, especially since Superstorm Sandy caused $60 billion of damage in 2012.
But flooding caused by intense rainfall — pluvial flooding — is a problem that the city is only beginning to fully understand, Rosenzweig said. The rainfall is immensely difficult to forecast, and the city does not have technology to monitor the flooding it causes in real time.
Flooding shows risks to city posed by increasing storm deluges
Cars crawling through a foot of water on the Harlem River Drive. Straphangers wading through chest-high pools to get from subway platform to stairway. Water racing down Dyckman Street and pooling along Broadway in Upper Manhattan.
Several inches of rain dropped on parts of New York City Thursday evening, overwhelming the drainage system in those areas, which led to flooding and outflows of sewage into city rivers.
Flooding caused by rainstorms is not new to New York City, Rosenzweig said, but what is new is the increasing frequency, caused by climate change. Climate change is making the atmosphere warmer, she said, meaning the air will hold more and more moisture. Longer and more intense hurricane seasons as well will mean more storms of this type. Cloudbursts typically release enough rain to overwhelm just about any city, not just New York, she added.
Flooding caused by sea level rise — coastal flooding — has been the main focus of both government and residents, especially since Superstorm Sandy caused $60 billion of damage in 2012.
But flooding caused by intense rainfall — pluvial flooding — is a problem that the city is only beginning to fully understand, Rosenzweig said. The rainfall is immensely difficult to forecast, and the city does not have technology to monitor the flooding it causes in real time.
The ones that are entering to go into the subway station are not the brightest.
Some had big plastic garbage bags though, not the first woman. I wonder if they kept off that dirty water although they were probably already soaked. The water there hadn't been sitting to long. The much nastier stuff would have been on the tracks and platform I'm guessing
but it's still shocking anybody would try to get through waist deep water like that, they probably had no bus options. What they could have done if they had the money is try to get a cab just to the next station.
That's why I keep an inflatable raft in my bag. It's not that big but does the trick
How many threads are we going to have about recent flooding in NYC subway system?
Such events aren't new, nor totally unpredictable. There are tons of now long buried streams, ponds, and other bodies of water under Manhattan. Subway system often built tunnels through or near such bodies of water. Water will always seek it's own level, and will go where nature has sent it long before white man arrived in New World, much less what is now called New York City.
Always with the climate change bull****. Last summer it was hot and it didn't rain, OMG IT'S CLIMATE CHANGE! This summer we are getting heavy rains, OMG IT'S CLIMATE CHANGE!
It's not climate change. It's the weather.
Always with the climate change bull****. Last summer it was hot and it didn't rain, OMG IT'S CLIMATE CHANGE! This summer we are getting heavy rains, OMG IT'S CLIMATE CHANGE!
It's not climate change. It's the weather.
It couldn't possibly be climate change, with the way man destroys the environment.
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