A strong, deadly storm known as a nor’easter battered the US east coast over the weekend, bringing power outages, flooding, damaging winds, and hazardous ocean conditions to a region stretching from North Carolina through New England. The storm system left a significant path of destruction, with trees and power lines downed across the region, while officials cautioned that conditions could deteriorate further.
By Sunday, the scale of the impact was widespread, with nearly 150,000 households losing electricity, according to the website Poweroutage.US. Travel was also significantly disrupted; the Federal Aviation Administration advised travelers to check with their airlines for updated flight information, while FlightAware reported more than 3,000 US delays and nearly 430 cancellations.
Tragedy struck in the Brooklyn borough of New York City on Saturday when a 56-year-old New York City housing authority employee was killed after being struck by a falling tree in a parking lot. The victim was pronounced dead at Brookdale University hospital, though authorities had not immediately determined whether wind caused the tree to fall. In another incident in the Glendale area of Queens, high winds caused a tree to fall at approximately 5:40 p.m., resulting in downed power lines and the precautionary evacuation of a nearby building by the New York City fire department. No injuries were reported in the Queens incident.
New York governor Kathy Hochul declared a state of emergency covering the Bronx, Kings, Nassau, New York, Queens, Richmond, Suffolk, and Westchester counties. Meanwhile, residents along the New Jersey coast spent Saturday removing debris and cleaning up between periods of high tide after the storm forced flood water into streets and homes. Eight counties in New Jersey remain under a state of emergency issued before the coastal storm arrived.
The National Weather Service expected coastal flooding to bring significant impacts from the Jersey Shore south to the northern Outer Banks of North Carolina, with more moderate flooding forecast along the Massachusetts coast. The storm, which struck the mid-Atlantic and New England over the weekend, was forecast to continue into the early part of this week, with flooding expected to rise and recede along with the tides.
