Nor’easter floods East Coast, kills one and disrupts travel

A powerful nor’easter flooded coastal communities from North Carolina to New England over the weekend, knocking out electricity to hundreds of thousands of customers, disrupting flights and leaving one person dead in New York City.

The slow-moving storm brought heavy rain, damaging winds, rough surf and dangerous rip currents. Trees and power lines fell across the region as flooding reached streets and homes. The National Weather Service said the storm was expected to weaken Sunday night, though heavy rain could persist into Monday in parts of the Mid-Atlantic and New England.

A 56-year-old New York City Housing Authority employee died Saturday after a tree fell on him in a parking lot in Brooklyn. Police said he was pronounced dead at Brookdale University Hospital. Authorities had not immediately determined whether wind caused the tree to fall.

In Queens, streets in the Howard Beach neighborhood were inundated, Al Jazeera reported. Elsewhere in the borough, a tree fell in Glendale at about 5:40 p.m., bringing down power lines and closing a roadway. Firefighters evacuated a nearby building as a precaution; no injuries were reported there. On Long Island, wind toppled trees, damaged homes and brought down utility poles, according to Al Jazeera.

Along the Jersey Shore, residents cleared debris Saturday between high tides after floodwater entered streets and homes. Tidal surges swamped low-lying New Jersey neighborhoods again Sunday. Al Jazeera reported that some places in the state had received more than 4 inches of rain since Friday and that residents described flooding not seen there for close to a decade. Images of waves crashing into sea walls and onto beaches also raised concerns about coastal erosion, the outlet reported.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul declared a state of emergency for the Bronx, Kings, Nassau, New York, Queens, Richmond, Suffolk and Westchester counties. Eight New Jersey counties remained under a state of emergency issued before the storm arrived.

PowerOutage.us recorded more than 100,000 customers without power across the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic at times Sunday. By Sunday afternoon, about 110,500 households still lacked electricity, including more than 21,000 customers in New York and about 11,940 in New Jersey. Outages were especially widespread in coastal counties from New Jersey to Connecticut, Al Jazeera reported.

Travel was also disrupted. FlightAware reported more than 5,000 delays and nearly 550 cancellations across the United States. At Boston Logan International Airport, more than 250 flights had been canceled by late Sunday morning as gusts reached 40 mph, according to the Massachusetts Port Authority. The airport also had a temporary ground delay. The Federal Aviation Administration advised passengers to check with their airlines for updated flight information.

The National Weather Service expected significant coastal flooding from the Jersey Shore south to North Carolina’s northern Outer Banks and more moderate flooding along the Massachusetts coast. Coastal flood warnings were canceled in several areas of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, but forecaster Bob Oravec said tidal flooding could continue through Sunday night’s high-tide cycles. Flood levels were expected to rise and recede with the tides as the week progressed.