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New York City Is Not Built for This

  • Web Diva
    Leader
    October 2, 2023 9:37 AM CDT
    Have you been keeping up with the deluge of rain and the flooding desctruction it has caused for New Yorkers? Here's an op-ed on the event you may find interesting if you are a weather geek.

    [url=https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2023/09/new-york-heavy-rain-flooding-state-of-emergency/675505/?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us]https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2023/09/new-york-heavy-rain-flooding-state-of-emergency/675505/?utm_source=pocket-newtab-en-us


    The city is seeing rainfall patterns that look more like Miami’s or even Singapore’s, an official said at The Atlantic Festival.


    More detail on how New York was constructed and why the engineering of NY sewer systems can't handle the rain.


    New York City’s sewer system is built for the rain of the past—when a notable storm might have meant 1.75 inches of water an hour. It wasn’t built to handle the rainfall from Hurricane Irene, Hurricane Sandy, or, more recently, Hurricane Ida—which dumped 3.15 inchesan hour on Central Park. And it wasn’t built to handle the kind of extreme rainfall that is becoming routine: The city flooded last December, last April, and last July—an unusual seasonal span. “We now have in New York something much more like a tropical-rainfall pattern,” Rohit Aggarwala, New York City’s environmental-protection commissioner, said yesterday at The Atlantic Festival. “And it happens over and over again.”