By Olivia Mangelli, Staff Writer
On Friday, Sept. 29, New York City and Long Island residents were confronted with massive amounts of rainfall and flooding. After raining almost every day that week and the weekend prior, New Yorkers were in for quite a treat.
Many people weren’t anticipating the extent of rain and flooding that New York City and Long Island experienced. Throughout the day, flash floods overpowered roads, halted subway and train service, and forced airline terminals to close at JFK and LaGuardia. Some schools in the city even closed or were forced to have evacuations as the day went on and the flooding got worse. New York City Mayor Eric Adams and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul both declared a state of emergency for the affected areas.
Leah Veprinsky, a senior at a NYC high school, detailed how her day was disrupted because of the flooding.
“I woke up to get ready for school when I realized it looked like a monsoon outside my window. The flooding wasn’t as severe yet so my school was still open but I dreaded going,” Veprinsky said. “I usually walk to school everyday since I live so close, but I didn’t want to be soaking wet, so I took a cab. The streets were already chaotic in the morning and the rain was so heavy.”
Veprinsky added that her normal commute of 10 minutes took her an extra 35 minutes in the cab because of the traffic the rain was causing.
If you chose not to leave the safety and comfort of your house because of the flooding, social media was updating everyone on the chaos and disorder happening outside. Tiktok was blowing up with posts from users showing the sunken NYC subway stations which eventually had to close due to the severity of the flooding.
Knee deep in water and still filming, these users weren’t shy to post clips of the streets which trapped cars and people whom had to be rescued by safety boats. sophomore musical theatre major Cassidiy Scherz recalled witnessing the hectic roads of Long Island on that day.
“My roommate and I thought it would be a good idea to go to the mall because we didn’t have class, and as we were driving there, besides the downpour of rain, the roads weren’t that bad, so we didn’t feel nervous.” Scherz said. “We stayed in the mall for a couple of hours and when we started driving back to campus multiple roads were closed and there were fire trucks everywhere. The road by Whole Foods was so flooded and so many cars were stuck. We saw people getting rescued by boats, the whole thing was insane. We had to take a detour and it took almost an hour to get back [to campus] when it normally takes fifteen minutes.”
As Veprinksky and Scherz can agree, their regular commutes took a lot longer than usual because of the flooding. Veprinsky, who ended school at around 3:00 p.m. explained how it was a nightmare getting home.
“I don’t know how my school wasn’t closed earlier because it was a mess by the time school ended. The streets were flooded, the roads were backed up, and the subway was closed, so it was a long commute home for everyone. I didn’t expect it to get so bad during the day, but it literally felt like the city was underwater. I was scared.”
After a long week, New Yorkers were definitely not thrilled with their Friday night plans being disrupted by heavy rain, more traffic than normal and lots of flooding. Many New Yorkers had different ways to capture their feelings. Comedic TikTok user Alex Mutammara shared videos of his apartment in the city with water dripping from the ceiling and over 15 pots and bowls being used to catch it. He captioned the video “so worth the $4,000 a month” with heart eyed emojis at the end.
It’s probably safe to say that New Yorkers have had enough of the rain, and are (hopefully) ready for some dry weather this fall.
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