Heavy rains are expected to return to the New York City area overnight Friday into Saturday, a week after historic levels of rainfall doused parts of the region, according to the National Weather Service.
The broader region is expected to get between half an inch to 1.5 inches of rainfall through Saturday night as a cold front moves in, though some areas could get as much as 5 inches, officials said. That doesn’t come close to last week’s totals, when some areas got close to 9 inches over a 24-hour period, but meteorologists warn there could be flooding.
“It’s possible that some areas may see two — perhaps even as high as even 3 inches,” NWS meteorologist Dominic Ramunni said Friday. “With the recent wet weather we’ve been dealing with here in the last couple of weeks, it’s not going to take much more to cause some of those nuisance flooding issues.”
Urban centers and areas with poor drainage could be vulnerable, especially given the substantial amount of rainfall over the last few weeks.
Though the rate of rainfall does not pose a widespread risk of flooding, some parts of the region could see rates of up to an inch and a half of rain per hour — bringing the risk of possible flash floods, Ramunni said.
“We’re not anticipating a widespread flood concern like we saw last Friday, where we did see localized areas pick up two, as much as 3 inches in a single hour,” Ramunni said. “Obviously that amount of water just doesn’t have anywhere to go, especially when you’re falling onto the concrete jungle.”
At a press conference on Friday, First Deputy Mayor Sheena Wright, who assumes the role of acting mayor when Eric Adams is out of town, urged New Yorkers to stay off the roads, to use public transportation, and get to higher ground if they live in flood prone areas or basement apartments. She said the risk of floods was heightened because the ground was still holding water from last week.
“Every single one of our agencies has an emergency…
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