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A powerful, slow-moving storm spent a second day battering the shoreline of the northeastern United States on Sunday, pumping waves over sea walls, flooding low-lying neighbourhoods from New Jersey to New York City and cutting electricity to tens of thousands of homes while air travel across the region ground to a halt.
In New Jersey, tidal surges pushed water into residential streets and commercial districts, with residents in Sea Bright spending Sunday clearing out a flooded pizza business. In New York City, portions of the Howard Beach neighbourhood in Queens were underwater, and video and photographs from the scene showed residents wading through intersections that had become canals. On Long Island, where gusts felled trees overnight, crews were dealing with damaged roofs, crushed vehicles and utility poles snapped off their foundations.
Meteorologists said the storm, a classic nor'easter named for the direction of the winds that drive it, was moving unusually slowly, a characteristic that can stretch a coastal event across days and keep beaches, bays and tidal rivers under repeated assault. Unlike a fast-tracking hurricane, which can clear an area before surge and rain peaks coincide, a crawling system keeps re-exposing the same coastline to the highest water levels of each tide.
Some New Jersey locations recorded more than 10cm (4 inches) of rain since Friday, according to the reporting. When those totals are combined with an ocean that has been pushed onshore by strong onshore flow, the result was flooding that residents said had not been seen in close to a decade — in communities where high water is a familiar part of spring tides and occasional nor'easters.
A key distinction for residents is that much of the damage described on Sunday came from tidal flooding, which peaks with the twice-daily high-tide cycles rather than with a swollen river. Bob Oravec, a lead forecaster at the National Weather Service in College Park, Maryland, said the storm was gradually weakening but that water would continue to rise through the high-tide cycles on Sunday night, effectively extending the threat even as winds eased. That pattern means a given block can be passable at low tide and impassable again hours later, catching residents and business owners who move too early.
The storm has also taken a human toll. A New York City housing authority worker was killed when a tree fell on Saturday, according to officials — a reminder that wind-driven hazards in densely wooded suburban neighbourhoods can be as dangerous as the water itself. Fall storms typically arrive as foliage is still on the trees, and wet, saturated ground combined with strong gusts increases the likelihood of limb and trunk failure.
Electricity losses have been extensive. More than 100,000 customers across the Northeast and mid-Atlantic were without power at times on Sunday, according to PowerOutage.us, with the most widespread outages in coastal counties stretching from New Jersey to Connecticut. Downed lines in New Jersey and New York are forcing utilities to de-energise neighbourhoods while line crews wait for winds to fall below safe working limits, a process that typically stretches restoration timelines.
Forecasters expected the heaviest of the remaining rain to fall on Sunday from northern New Jersey into southern New England, accompanied by strong winds and dangerous surf along the entire New England coastline. The combination of a powerful swell and onshore winds was also generating rough conditions well beyond the areas that flooded, complicating marine operations and prompting small-craft advisories along the shore.
Aviation was taking a direct hit. More than 250 flights had been cancelled at Boston Logan International Airport by late Sunday morning, according to the Massachusetts Port Authority, as wind gusts reached 64km/hour (40 mph). Airlines cancel or divert inbound flights when conditions exceed aircraft operating limits or when runways require de-icing and ground handling equipment cannot be safely deployed, and the effect ripples outward to connecting flights well beyond the airport itself.
The storm inevitably drew comparisons to Hurricane Sandy, which devastated the eastern United States in 2012 and left more than $60bn in damage. The nor'easter's impact is nowhere near that scale, but the imagery of surf exploding over coastal barriers and into neighbourhoods has revived memories of that weekend and the long recovery that followed. State and local emergency managers face the familiar tension between reopening roads and buildings quickly and assessing structural damage before repair crews arrive.
Forecasters are also watching the broader seasonal pattern. The El Niño climate pattern, a periodic warming of the central and eastern equatorial Pacific, is disrupting this year's jet stream and could make storms like this one more frequent along the East Coast this autumn. A single event is never proof of a long-term shift, but forecasters say El Niño winters tend to keep the subtropical jet farther north, favouring storm tracks that hug the seaboard.
Images of waves crashing into sea walls and onto beaches have raised immediate concerns about coastal erosion — the gradual loss of sand and shoreline that removes the natural buffer between storms and homes. Where dunes and beaches erode, floodwaters travel further inland, which can turn a manageable high tide into a neighbourhood-scale emergency for the next storm, and for the one after that.
For now, the immediate focus remains recovery. Residents in the hardest-hit communities were pumping water from basements, checking on elderly neighbours and clearing debris from storm drains, while utility crews and municipal public works teams began the slow work of assessing damage as the system moved away. The next high-tide cycle, forecasters warn, will be the real test of whether the water finally begins to recede.
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