Roads leading into Scotch Plains, N.J., on Tuesday morning showed signs of the torrential rains from the night before. Streets were smeared with brown mud and rocks were scattered about. Trees were down near abandoned cars, with tire tracks plowed through suburban lawns as drivers tried to navigate around the floods.
The flood water “was coming down like a river,” said Vincent Losavio, 79, the owner of John’s Meat Market, a commercial mainstay downtown. “You could’ve put a speedboat on it.” He pointed to pictures on the wall of his store that showed similar flooding in the 1970s. “We’ve been through this before, and they never fix it. They keep building more housing, and the flooding gets worse. It’s brutal.”
Between 6:51 and 7:51 p.m. on Monday, New York City recorded 2.07 inches of rainfall, the second wettest hour ever recorded in the city. Only the remnants of Hurricane Ida topped that, dumping 3.15 inches in an hour on Sept. 1, 2021.
The geyser of floodwater spurting from a subway platform in a 1 train station in Manhattan on Monday night was a result of the city’s antiquated sewage system, said Janno Lieber, the head of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs the subways. The sewer system can handle roughly 1.75 inches of rainfall per hour, but heavy rain last night exceeded that capacity, he said. After millions of gallons of water were pumped out of the system, subway service was largely back to normal Tuesday morning.
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