Drenching Rains Force Subway Lines to Close

Forget the terrorists; all it takes to stop New York City is some rain.

Tropical Depression Jeanne smote New York City last night, flooding out the second most traveled subway corridor in the city, the E, F, V, R, and G trains along the Queens Boulevard line around 11 p.m. The FDR Parkway quickly became impassable, minor puddles became virtual lakes, and bridge and tunnel entrance and exit ramps were closed because of the water.

The storm's downpour made September 2004 one for the record books as the second wettest September on record and the rainiest in over 100 years with 11.39 inches of rain at Central Park by 11 p.m. - and the it was still coming down in buckets.

An Accuweather.com senior meteorologist, Alex Sosnowski, had to research all the way back to 1882 to find the wettest September on record, when the city got 16.83 inches of rain.

Last night's intense rain overwhelmed the pumps that haul 16 million gallons of water out of the subway tunnels every day, resulting in flooding in the tunnels.

For the third time this year - the other two were both in September after Ivan and Frances - water levels in the subway tunnels were nearly high enough to short out the third rail that powers the trains.

"There's no subway in any city that could cope with 2 inches of rain in two hours," said the New York City Transit president, Lawrence Reuter, after a Capital Construction Committee meeting on Monday.

Jeanne toyed with the city all day yesterday, before delivering her haymaker after dark, when the skies really opened up. Areas that had been clouded already during the day - the day on parts of the Whitestone Expressway in Queens, the FDR Drive in Manhattan, and the Belt Parkway in Brooklyn - became completely blocked. Entrances to nearly every bridge and tunnel in the city were impeded by reservoirs of water that literally appeared over night.

Any delays on the commuter rails were caused directly by the storm, and not by any aftereffects of the electrical fire that affect for East River Tunnels that serve Amtrak, New Jersey Transit and the Long Island Rail Road. The systems were repaired by 3:30 p.m. yesterday, and the evening commute ran with few problems. An Amtrak spokesman, Marc Magliari, said Amtrak is "confident that repairs will be sufficient" to withstand the weather.

The heaviest rain was expected to fall after midnight last night and leave the area by 6 a.m. as the storm worked its way eastward and then north up the coast, according to the National Weather Service.

After Tropical Depression Ivan hit the city September 18, the Lexington Avenue line closed in Manhattan due to "water conditions."

If the storm sewers flood, water in the tunnels could reach the level of the electrified third rail and force subway lines to shut down, as they did after Tropical Depression Frances dropped 3 inches of rain in three hours earlier this month.

Farther south, Jeanne may have spawned a tornado at Cherry Hill, N.J. Eleven buildings, including a church, a drugstore, and a bank were damaged, along with several cars in the parking lots, but no one was reported injured, the Associated Press reported.