Heavy rainfall drenched parts of New York City, including Brooklyn and beyond, Friday, bringing flash floods, shutting down entire subway lines and converting major roadways into dangerous, fast-current waterways.
Flash foods, which are different and often more dangerous than generalized flooding, have crept into the nation’s weather and disaster parlance as their frequency picks up and they hit more unsuspecting places, including submerging parts of the Las Vegas Strip last summer. Read: Homeowners can check a property’s flood, heat and wildfire risk for free with this high-powered app
One of the biggest differences between flash floods and generalized flooding is that flash floods can be more dangerous than people think. Even a few inches of water can have a current that knocks people down and just a few feet of water can send a car floating. Flash flooding at night is particularly dangerous, because unknown depths are disguised, looking simply like wet surfaces.
And during 2021’s Hurricane Ida, the NWS office in New York declared its first-ever set of flash flood emergencies in the region, an alert level that is reserved for “exceedingly rare situations when a severe threat to human life and catastrophic damage from a flash flood is happening or will happen soon,” officials said at the time.