Nor'easter Stalls Off East Coast, Floods Towns and Cuts Power
Coastal towns from New Jersey to New England recorded a second day of flooding on Sunday, Sept. 27, as a nor'easter drove tidal surges ashore and stalled along the coast.
Tidal surges, when wind pushes ocean water inland, flooded low neighborhoods in New Jersey. Some places in the state had received more than 4 inches of rain since Friday. On New York's Long Island, gusts knocked down trees, damaged homes and toppled utility poles. The Guardian
The storm turned deadly on Saturday. A New York City Housing Authority worker was killed when a tree fell.
A Coastal Flood Advisory, meaning flooding of low streets and basements was expected, was in effect for Long Branch, New Jersey, from 1:46 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. on Sept. 28. Officials in New Jersey and New York warned that high tide late Monday could bring more flooding. The National Weather Service predicted the system would weaken Sunday night, with local heavy rain continuing in parts of New England and the mid-Atlantic.
New York and New Jersey had declared states of emergency before the storm, a step that gives state governments added tools to prepare for flooding and outages. Forecasters had warned of basement flooding, travel disruption and power losses along the East Coast. Reuters
Power losses were concentrated near the water. The most widespread outages were in coastal counties from New Jersey to Connecticut. Well over 100,000 customers were without power at times on Sunday across the Northeast and mid-Atlantic. An earlier count found more than 73,000 homes and businesses without power in Connecticut, New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Rhode Island. Reuters
By Monday morning, total outages across the United States had fallen to about 55,000, including more than 10,000 in Hawaii during Hurricane Nolo.
Travel was disrupted. More than 250 flights were canceled at Boston Logan airport by late Sunday morning as gusts reached 40 mph. The storm forced the cancellation of several major events and hundreds of flights across the Northeast. The New York Times
Nor'easters are named for the northeast winds that push them toward shore. The National Weather Service notes they can occur at any time of year but are most frequent and strongest between September and April. National Weather Service
The broader context here is timing and geography. A late-September storm arriving during very high seasonal tides can flood the same low streets again and again, even without record rain. That cycle explains why emergency managers watched the Monday night high tide as closely as the rainfall, and why damage to trees and power lines clustered in coastal counties where wind, surge and wet soil acted together. The next question is how fast water drains between tides and whether the weakening forecast for Sunday night holds through the next high water.
