Debby Races Toward New York City

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Debby was downgraded to a tropical storm, wrecking parts of Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas. It then started racing north along the Atlantic coast. It will pass through Virginia and aim at the northeast, particularly New York City. Miami could not have survived Debby intact.

Accuweather says, “Up to 8 inches or more of rainfall is possible from the Appalachians through the Northeast later this week with a risk of flash flooding, especially in valleys prone to flooding.” The most vulnerable areas are eastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and southern New York. The storm will then move to New England. Debbie could cause a rise in home insurance rates in these areas.

Debby is not a storm of the magnitude of Hurricane Sandy, which hit the northeast in October 2012. The storm cost $93 billion in 2023 dollars and killed at least 254 people. It started in the Caribbean and worked its way up the East Coast. On October 26, it swamped thousands of homes along the New Jersey coast and shut down most of the state.

In NYC, the Tappan Zee Bridge, the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel, and the Holland Tunnel were closed. The largest airports were shut down, and much of southern Manhattan was swamped.

What Debbie does, however, is warn people along the East Coast that a storm, fueled by a warming Atlantic, can run far North and remain extremely powerful and destructive.. As the Altanic heats quickly because of global warming, this becomes much more likely.