Chuck, Gilly lash state’s storm prep
New York would have been better prepared for the record-setting rainfall from the remnants of Hurricane Ida had the state’s weather tracking system been more advanced, Sens. Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand said Sunday.
The Sept. 1 storm dumped more than 7 inches of rain in the city, including 3.1 inches in Central Park in just one hour, the National Weather Service reported. The deluge broke an hourly rainfall record set Aug. 21 by Tropical Storm Henri, when 1.9 inches drenched the park in a single hour.
City and state agencies all issued flood alerts for Ida as it closed in on the five boroughs. The New York pols blamed the late warnings on deficiencies in the state’s Mesonet system, a weather tracking database run by the University at Albany.
Mesonet has 126 weather observation stations across the state, but only 17 of them use Doppler radar technology to monitor storms in real time. Schumer said more real-time tracking and upgrades are needed to keep New Yorkers safe from storms and floods, arguing more modern equipment may have saved some of the 13 people killed in the city floods.
“If we had known in advance that there was going to be such a torrent as came down with Ida, warnings could have been issued ahead of time and, in all likelihood, lives could have been saved,” Schumer said at a news conference. “Unfortunately, as the last two storms showed, that Mesonet needs upgrading. Everyone knows we did not understand the full amount of the storm.”
Schumer and Gillibrand said they’d push for a $3 million boost to Mesonet as part of a $30 million package for weather tracking upgrades in the upcoming federal budget. “These are supposed to be once-in-a-generation storms, but we had Henri and Ida back-to-back,” said Gillibrand. “Our technological capacity has to keep pace with the needs of global climate change.”
University at Albany spokesman Jordan Carleo-Evangelist said the Mesonet system worked as designed during Ida, and was the only reason the storm was tracked in real time.
“The New York State Mesonet is the most advanced weather observation network in the nation, including more than 20 network sites in and around New York City,” said Carleo-Evangelist.
“Ida was a disaster not because the Mesonet was inadequate but because, among other things, our infrastructure across [the] United States is not prepared for climate change, which will make storms like Ida more commonplace.”