Up to 56 million people across the eastern seaboard of the US are at risk of flash flooding, gusts of up to 60 mph and even isolated weak tornadoes, as an unusually powerful storm lashes the region.
Flash-flood warnings were issued across New York City, Newark, and Jersey City, with strong gusts reported in areas of Nassau County and the city boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens on Wednesday.
Eyewitness video from the affected areas shows the sheer ferocity of the storm as it bore down on residents, unleashing nature’s full fury following a major heatwave.
AccuWeather Senior Meteorologist Carl Babinski warned of “heavy thunderstorms” as a result of a “very humid air mass spreading out across the East,” but it appears from video uploaded to social media that residents got a lot more than just thunder.
Beleaguered residents in Hoboken, New Jersey complained to City Mayor Ravi Bhalla that this was the second “once-in-50-year-storm” the city had endured in the space of two weeks as, once again, the city’s flood defenses failed.
Despite efforts to install more flood pumps in recent years, the streets were still awash and apparently smelling of sewage.
Just two weeks ago, the Northeastern Seaboard was hit by an unusual tropical storm which formed in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and hit the Jersey Shore directly, in much the same way Hurricane Sandy did in 2012.
Speaking about the storm at the beginning of July, Hoboken Mayor Ravi Bhalla described it as “the equivalent of a 50-year storm; in other words, a storm that has a two percent chance of happening in any year.”
Meanwhile, in Virginia, residents were so astonished by the violent winds on Wednesday evening that some wondered whether they’d just survived a tornado.
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