A flash flood warning was issued Monday for Brooklyn and Queens after rain had already begun soaking parts of New York City, putting the city’s most crowded boroughs on immediate alert as a storm system moved through the region.
Brooklyn and Queens had already taken in 1 to 2 inches of rain by Monday morning, and the flood watch covering the entire New York City metropolitan area was set to remain in place through Monday night. New York City and Long Island sat in the center of the storm zone, where rainfall could reach 3 inches an hour in some places and total as much as 8 inches before the system moved on.
The warning is what made Monday different from a typical rainy day. Mayor Zohran Mamdani had already urged New Yorkers on Sunday to take precautions, saying city workers were clearing catch basins and preparing neighborhoods that flood often. He asked people in basement apartments to plan to evacuate and told residents, “If you see water rising around you, move to higher ground.”
By midday, the weather had already started to reach beyond the city itself. More than 700 flights had been canceled by 2:30 p.m. ET at New York and New Jersey airports, and all major airports in the region were seeing delays of more than an hour as thunderstorms forced ground stops throughout the day. The same system had already knocked out power for 85,000 utility customers in New York on Sunday and more than 800,000 from Oklahoma to Connecticut.
There was also a reminder that dangerous weather does not always look the way people expect. Severe weather likely caused the roof of a BJ's Wholesale Club in Ocean Township, New Jersey, to partially collapse Monday morning while 27 people were inside, but no injuries were reported and two people who were briefly trapped were able to get out safely. Michael Sorrentino said, “This incident is another reminder of how quickly severe weather can create dangerous and unpredictable conditions.”
The storms arrived after a deadly holiday weekend heat wave and spread across a broad Northeast system that included Southern Connecticut, Rhode Island and southeast Massachusetts, with flooding also reported in Philadelphia. For New Yorkers in Brooklyn and Queens, the urgent question is no longer whether the storm would be disruptive. It is how much more water the city can take before Monday night ends.
