New Yorkers woke up Wednesday to dry skies, but gusty winds. In and around New York City, the Weather Service predicted winds ranging from 35 to 40 m.p.h., though in coastal towns like Montauk on the tip of Long Island, winds could be as high as 60 m.p.h., it said.
As of Wednesday morning, only about 14,590 New York homes were without power, according to PowerOutage.us. And public transit was running smoothly, with few unplanned delays.
Officials had moved quickly to prepare for the nor’easter, in part scarred by the intensity of several storms this summer that exposed the region’s vulnerability to extreme weather events made more frequent and intense by climate change.
The threats were brought into stark relief last month, when torrential rain brought by Ida unleashed rushing waters that killed 11 people, including a toddler and his parents, in basement apartments in New York City. At least 43 people died across New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Connecticut amid the hurricane’s watery remnants.
“We’re not looking outside and seeing Ida today; however, every storm has to be taken seriously,” Joseph Fiordaliso, who leads New Jersey’s utility board, said at a news conference on Tuesday.
“Someday maybe we’ll just have a regular rainstorm. We don’t seem to get those much anymore,” he said, adding, “Climate change is real, and we have to work to mitigate as much of it as we possibly can.”
Reporting was contributed by James Barron, Johnny Diaz, Precious Fondren, Michael Gold, Azi Paybarah, Dana Rubinstein, Ed Shanahan, Chris Stanford, Derrick Bryson Taylor, Tracey Tully, Ashley Wong and Mihir Zaveri.
