Tornado confirmed in wild NYC storms

NEW YORK — The nation's largest mass transit system appeared to be getting back to its usual self Thursday, a day after an intense storm flooded the tracks and turned simple trips into all-morning nightmares.

Four subway lines were still experiencing residual delays, more than 24 hours after the fast-moving rain that also produced a tornado, but for millions it was a normal morning.

A few wet track beds and lingering humidity were the only sign of the chaos the day before.

On Wednesday, subway tracks were swamped, buses were overwhelmed and commuter trains were held up for hours because of floods. Some roads became waterways, and one woman was killed in car accident during the storm.

Homes in Brooklyn had their roofs torn off by the borough's first confirmed tornado since modern record keeping began, although meteorologists also found some old stories about a possible twister in 1889.

Forecasters saw "the potential" for a new round of heavy thunderstorms in the metro area Thursday night or Friday morning, National Weather Service meteorologist Adrienne Leptich said. She said it was impossible early Thursday to be certain where the storms might strike, or how severe they might be.

Wednesday's storm hit just before dawn. By rush hour, pumping stations became overwhelmed, and the subway system was virtually paralyzed. Bedlam resulted from too much rain, too fast; some suburban commuters spent a half day just getting to work. Crews worked feverishly to pump out the subways, but it took until the evening rush hour to get most of the system back on line.

"One big rain, and it all falls apart," Ruby Russell, 64, said as she sat waiting on a train in Brooklyn around 9 a.m. Wednesday. She had been trying to get to Manhattan for three hours.

The failure renewed a debate about whether the network of pumps, sewers and drains that protects the city's subways from flooding needs an overhaul. Every line experienced some measure of delay as track beds turned into streams gurgling with millions of gallons of rainwater. The washout marked the third time in seven months that the subways were disrupted by rain.

MTA engineers were asked to report back to Gov. Eliot Spitzer within 30 days with suggestions about how to deal with the chronic flooding.

"We have a design issue that we need to think about," Spitzer said.

The National Weather Service said a tropical air mass dumped an extraordinary amount of rain in a short period of time. The worst was recorded between 5 a.m. and 8 a.m., with 2.5 inches falling on Central Park and almost 3.5 on Kennedy International Airport. At one point, more than 1.5 inches fell within an hour in Central Park, Leptich said.

MTA Executive Director Elliot G. Sander said the intensity of the rain was simply overwhelming. The subway's drainage system can generally handle a maximum of 1.5 inches of rainfall per hour; on an average day, hundreds of MTA pumps remove 13 million gallons of water from the system, which includes several tunnels and stations below sea level.

Public officials called for improvements in the drainage system after a similar rain-related shutdown in 1999, and the MTA made some changes after another round of paralyzing tunnel floods in 2004, when the remnants of Hurricane Frances washed out the subways for hours.

City Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Emily Lloyd said the city is spending $300 million per year upgrading its piping systems and has been gradually building a more robust stormwater drainage system.

The National Weather Service said a tornado touched down several times in Staten Island and in Brooklyn, where winds downed trees, tore off rooftops and wrapped signs around posts. At least 40 homes were damaged.

Tornadoes have hit New York City before, but not often. The National Weather Service had records of at least five, plus sketchy detail on the reported sighting in 1889. None was as strong as Wednesday's twister, which had winds as high as 135 mph.

Lanie Mastellone, who lives in Brooklyn's Bay Ridge neighborhood, awoke as her roof was coming off. Before escaping, she ran to get her late husband's wedding ring.

"It happened so quick. Maybe he was watching over me," Mastellone said.

The weather also created problems for the region's airports, where delays of up to an hour were reported. Throughout the region, thousands of people lost electricity for part of the day.

http://www.usatoday.com/weather/storms/2007-08-09-nyc-storms_N.htm