Mother Nature is delivering a grab bag of fun weather treats this week: snow, sleet, wind, bitter temperatures — and now flooding. Thanks to high tides and the resulting storm surge, residents near the shoreline in Queens and Brooklyn may be dealing with flooded streets (and possibly basements) well into Wednesday morning.
Water rose into the streets of the Rockaways and Belle Harbor as early as Monday, taking residents and the city somewhat by surprise. “We found out, obviously, as it was happening. It was not expected from the original reports,” Mayor Bill de Blasio told WNYC Monday.
The National Weather Service has now issued a coastal flood warning for parts of Queens and the south shore of Long Island.
Brooklyn hasn’t been spared either.
New Jersey is also affected, and roads in Hoboken and many towns along the Jersey shore are slowly turning into small lakes.
On top of all that, there’s likely to be some snow this evening, just in time for the commute. The city will probably get somewhere between one and three inches. This on-and-off mixed precipitation — which has been hanging around since Monday, making it extremely difficult to make footwear choices — should be out of the area by Wednesday afternoon … and then we’ll get the freeze. For real this time. The end of the week should see highs in the low 20s and maybe teens, possibly constituting the roughest cold spell of the season so far. Let’s not even talk about wind chill, because the regular numbers are bad enough.
Oh, those few February days of 50-degree weather, we hardly knew ye.
