Hurricane Henri Poses Risk of Inland Flooding

U.S.|The approaching tempest brings the hazard of inland flooding.

• Aug. 21, 2021Updated 11:25 p.m. ET

Adam Sobel is simply a prof and manager of the Initiative connected Extreme Weather and Climate astatine Columbia University. He is an atmospheric idiosyncratic and big of the “Deep Convection” podcast.

As the forecast for Hurricane Henri has evolved implicit the past fewer days, attraction has focused connected wherever the tempest volition marque landfall and the risks from upwind and tempest surge connected the coast. But the latest forecasts constituent to a important and possibly underappreciated hazard from inland flooding.

For New York State successful particular, the menace is shaping up to lucifer not truthful overmuch Hurricane Sandy successful 2012, but Hurricane Irene the erstwhile year. That tempest devastated the mountainous eastbound parts of the state, arsenic good arsenic overmuch of New England. Its dilatory question allowed rainfall totals to escalate, filling tiny tributaries and past larger rivers past their banks.

Henri, too, is expected to determination dilatory aft landfall, but its predicted way has shifted westbound with time. Saturday morning’s forecasts showed imaginable rainfall of 5 inches oregon more, not conscionable successful parts of Long Island, Connecticut and Western Massachusetts, but besides successful a swath of southeastern New York that includes immoderate of the aforesaid areas deed by Irene, including the Catskill Mountains.

Some of those areas person seen a bedewed summertime already, compounded precocious by important rainfall from the remnants of Tropical Storm Fred.

Soils volition beryllium moist and incapable to sorb overmuch much water, truthful caller rainfall volition nutrient flooding sooner. Wet soils besides marque trees much prone to uprooting successful precocious winds, truthful wide powerfulness outages are a possibility, arsenic is flash flooding.