@ForgottenNY Atlanta’s official climate reporting site (Hartsfield-Jackson) reported ZERO rain on Wednesday while downtown, just 9 miles north of there, picked up nearly 3” in one hour!
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Mathieu Blue
7.7K posts
Mathieu Blue
@MathieuBlue
Weather Producer/Meteorologist • Singer-Songwriter • Event Producer • New Englandah for life 🩵
New York, NY Katılım Nisan 2009
900 Takip Edilen1.5K Takipçiler
PSA 🔊
2”+ of rain falling in an hour over a heavily urbanized area will cause flash flooding almost anywhere.
We saw it in New York City. We saw it in Atlanta.
Debate infrastructure all you want, but no mayor controls rainfall rates.
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@NyShittyNews PSA 🔊
2”+ of rain falling in an hour over a heavily urbanized area will cause flash flooding almost anywhere.
We saw it in New York City. We saw it in Atlanta.
Debate infrastructure all you want, but no mayor controls rainfall rates.
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#NYShitty🗽💩; Subway or car wash? Another classic from today’s storm after such a BEAUTIFUL DAY! Currently at #GrandArmyPlaza in #Brooklyn
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@AmericaPapaBear PSA 🔊
2”+ of rain falling in an hour over a heavily urbanized area will cause flash flooding almost anywhere.
We saw it in New York City. We saw it in Atlanta.
Debate infrastructure all you want, but no mayor controls rainfall rates.
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Floods and floating trash.
I can’t think of a more spot on image of Mamdani’s NYC.
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@USronaldcarter New York City did NOT receive anywhere near 6” rain yesterday. The highest recorded amount was less than 3” in Queens.
Also, NO flash flood warnings were issued by @NWSNewYorkNY, let alone in “every borough.”
It’s sad to see misinformation spread so blithely for clicks.
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Nobody is telling you how FUCKED New York City's infrastructure actually is right now.
Everyone is watching the flood footage. The cars underwater. The subway stations turned into swimming pools.
Nobody is talking about the fact that six inches of rain just paralyzed a global city.
Not a hurricane. Not a once-in-a-century storm. Six inches. In a few hours. And the Long Island Expressway shut down in both directions. The F train suspended. Flash flood warnings across every borough.
By rain.
→ Cost of fixing this: deferred for decades
→ Cost of not fixing it: the entire city grinds to a halt
→ That is not a weather problem. That is a maintenance problem.
NYC's catch-basin cleaning fleet was 63% out of service during prior storms. By end of 2023 it was 77% out of service. The city had 19 functional trucks for five boroughs.
Nineteen trucks. For eight million people.
💀 Here's what nobody is explaining to you:
This doesn't just change THIS storm. This changes ALL storms. Forever.
→ NYC has 7,400 miles of combined storm and sewer pipes that back up the moment rainfall exceeds capacity
→ Many of those pipes are over 100 years old — built before cars existed, let alone SUVs and modern runoff volumes
→ Fewer than half of the city's 964 priority catch basins were inspected before recent storms hit
→ This exact same thing happened in 2023. And 2025. Same expressway. Same subway lines. Same excuses.
→ The city knows which drains are clogged. They have a data-driven priority list.
→ They just don't have the trucks to clean them.
→ So every time it rains hard, the same streets flood, the same trains stop, the same headlines run.
→ And then nothing changes until the next storm proves it again.
The source tweet said it directly: "Six inches of rain shouldn't do this to a major city, but clogged drains and years of deferred maintenance will."
That's not a weather forecast. That's a confession.
New York spent decades deferring the maintenance bill. May 21, 2026 is what the invoice looks like.
Bookmark this. You're watching the biggest infrastructure failure since the last time it rained.
I'll keep you updated. Turn on notifications. 🚨
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@VickieforNYC Actually, it’s not.
New York City did not receive anywhere near 6” rain yesterday. The highest recorded amount was less than 3” in Queens.
Also, NO flash flood warnings were issued by @NWSNewYorkNY, let alone in “every borough.”
It’s sad misinformation is spread so blithely.
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@IsaacWxObserver @nysmesonet …”as the drainage system becomes overwhelmed, water overflows as runoff, & pluvial flooding, or what is commonly known as street flooding, occurs. Further, as urban areas are densely populated, the consequences of flooding are oftentimes more severe than coastal/tidal flooding.”
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@IsaacWxObserver @nysmesonet …”within the urban environment, the effects are pronounced. Urban watersheds, lined with impervious surfaces, such as concrete, asphalt, and stone, have a limited amount of infiltration and recharge during heavy rainfall; thus, surface flow dominates the hydrological response.”
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@MathieuBlue Agreed - the absolute ideal is probably 75 w/ a few fluffy clouds. But I still will take 65ish and overcast a million times over 90+ and humid.
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Memorial Day Weekend DELUGE for NYC Metro ☔
Models are coming into solid agreement for a holiday weekend washout (GFS trended toward Euro), with the heaviest rain likely falling later Saturday thru much of Sunday.
It won't rain every second, but don't expect any beach weather.
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@IsaacWxObserver @nysmesonet “Street flooding is problematic in urban areas, where impervious surfaces, such as concrete, brick, and asphalt prevail, impeding the infiltration of water into the ground.”
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@MathieuBlue @nysmesonet Flooding occurred in more areas per reports then just the place that received maximum rainfall does not translate to "large portions of NYC flooded"
sciencedirect.com/science/articl…
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@MathieuBlue Thank goodness. Anything over 90 with humidity is unbearable. Give me 65ish and overcast please.
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@IsaacWxObserver @nysmesonet We can only go by actual reports and ground truth. Flooding of “large portions of NYC” yesterday simply isn’t a reportable fact, nor is “way worse *than* it used to be” without actual historical data to back it up.
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@MathieuBlue @nysmesonet Flooding was more widespread than just the area that received maximum rainfall. Flooding wasn't just confined to there. Quick rainfall over an inch would flood large portions of NYC.
Its way worse then it used to be.
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@MathieuBlue The areas in Queens we are seeing are classic flood zones. Instead of building bike lanes and road diets/daylighting, we should be paying down NYC Water’s debts and re-investing in infrastructure improvements, not pet projects of transients.
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@IsaacWxObserver One more time for the folks in the back 🗣️
More than 2” fell in less than an hour, with data collected at @nysmesonet weather stations. These rare rain rates + NYC’s drainage threshold for rain per hour aren’t subjective.
x.com/nyswrcc/status…
NY State Weather Risk Communication Center@NYSWRCC
Flooding in southern #Queens and southern #Brooklyn last night was caused by heavy rainfall, with portions of this area experiencing over 2" in one hour. The sewer capacity is generally 1.5-1.75"/h in this area. Some locations reported as much as .5" of rain in just 5 minutes!
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@MathieuBlue The report where this took place had 1.8 inches of rain per report. Keep in mind that it rained for a good bit after the storms itself.
Nothing about these storms were out of the ordinary. It is not acceptable and no, it did not always flood this easily.
x.com/PassengersUnit…
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@IsaacWxObserver Those 2”+ local amounts on that map? That fell in about 30-40 minutes. NYC’s drainage system can only withstand about 1.75” per hour.
So while the total accumulation for yesterday’s rain seems minuscule, the flash flooding occurred due to how *quickly* it fell—NOT the total.
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@MathieuBlue I'm not talking about frequency here. This used to not be such a problem. The storms yesterday was an event that happens multiple times a year. It should not flood every single heavy thunderstorm.
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@IsaacWxObserver One could argue the frequency of which those rainfall rates occur is getting worse, but that kind of hyperlocal flooding resulting from said rates has been & will always be an issue with the existing infrastructure.
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@MathieuBlue It getting worse over the years and this was a run of the mill thunderstorm, and the 2+ inches was very localized
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@nobodyowens47 Clogged storm drains can’t exacerbate heavy rain; they can contribute to more flooding FROM heavy rain if not cleared, as we saw last fall from leaves.
Yesterday’s event was not that. Intense rain rates falling over dense urbanization caused the flash flooding in prone areas.
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@MathieuBlue No, but he does control sanitation and sanitation is notorious for not clearing storm drains which when clogged exacerbates heavy rains.
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@MaxRovensky KL’s infrastructure was designed for some of the highest rainfall rates (~5”/hr) in Southeast Asia, where extreme tropical downpours are commonplace. It’s all relative.
Blaming decades of existing infrastructure on a current administration—or a single person—is purely political.
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@MathieuBlue Kuala Lumpur gets 8-9" rainfall *regularly*
It's almost never noticeable
Because the city has infrastructure to handle it (look up E38 it's an engineering marvel)
Humans are incredible, we have beaten nature into submission a long time ago. All you need is the will to act
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@MathieuBlue it seems to be the American way these days
I'm so sick of it I try not to watch
Keep up the good work
I hope to catch you out and about one of these days
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