News

aug 13 2014 storm - complete coverage

The body of a Black Russian terrier swept away Wednesday by a surging Carlls River in Babylon was retrieved by his family after being discovered floating in the bay off Montauk Highway.
"Closure was the most important thing," John Kelly said Thursday morning, just after picking up Yuri's remains. "We wanted to do everything we could to find his body. We got that, and we're able to go from there."
Kelly and his wife, Kristen, of West Babylon, launched a massive search for Yuri, a 120-pound dog, after he was swallowed up by the surging waters of the river, whipped up by the huge rainstorm that struck Long Island earlier that day. 
Kristen Kelly took their four Black Russian terriers out. But Yuri pulled free from his leash, said John Kelly, and went to lap at the water. "Then he took one more step and just fell right in," Kristen Kelly said.
The couple, along with dozens of friends, strangers, and fire and police officials had searched into the night, wading into the water and combing the shore between the flooded Southards Pond and Argyle Lake in Babylon and south down the Carlls River.
John Kelly said he received a phone call early Thursday from some searchers from Huntington who found Yuri's body floating in the bay, near Peninsula Drive and Montauk Highway.
He said Yuri will be cremated. "We have him. He's just not out there anymore," John Kelly said.
With Candice Ruud and Sarah Armaghan

Weather

LIDOG15

Yuri, missing dog swept away during storm, found dead

lidogs cropped

Long Islanders were struggling with the aftermath of the historic weather event that had dumped double-digit amounts of rainfall Wednesday across parts of the area, flooding roadways, rail lines and basements. 
The National Weather Service's Upton office said 13.27 inches came down on Islip between 11 p.m. Tuesday and 10:30 a.m. Wednesday, and another third of an inch fell Wednesday evening. 
The Northeast Regional Climate Center said "rainfall of this magnitude is only expected to occur once in a 200-year period." The monthly rainfall for Islip is now 14.03 inches, which beats the record for August, set in 1990 at 13.78 inches. 
The result was massive flooding in some residential neighborhoods and several major roadways in Nassau and Suffolk counties Wednesday morning, along with delays on Long Island Rail Road trains. There was at least one storm-related death in Melville, police said, and Suffolk officers had to swim to rescue a man Wednesday morning who had driven into 6-foot deep floodwaters on a Coram roadway. 
As of Wednesday night, parts of Sunrise Highway, the Meadowbrook State Parkway, Ocean Parkway and the Robert Moses Causeway were still closed due to flooding. 
But on the rails, the Long Island Rail Road was expected to operate a normal morning commute Thursday, with no planned cancellations or delays. A spokeswoman said some LIRR waiting rooms in Babylon branch train stations -- such as Seaford and Freeport -- took on water during the height of the storm. 
The water has receded, she said, but there will be some restoration required in the stations that were inundated by water. 
Late Wednesday, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo said the Department of Financial Services' mobile command center would be in Islip to provide insurance assistance to homeowners, renters, and businesses affected by the flooding. It will be at the Islip Town Hall parking lot, 401 Main St., from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Thursday. The department's disaster hotline phone number is 800-339-1759. 
The 13.57 inches was recorded at Long Island MacArthur Airport in Ronkonkoma and set a state record for precipitation in a 24-hour period, the weather service said. 
According to a preliminary report, that amount breaks the previous mark of 11.6 inches recorded on Aug. 27-28, 2011, in Tannersville, during what the service referred to as Hurricane/Tropical Storm Irene. 
Also reporting double-digit rainfall in Suffolk County locations were a weather service employee and trained spotters, with 12.57 inches recorded in Holbrook; 11.50 in West Islip; 11.35 in Bay Shore. Nassau saw 7.84 inches in Wantagh, 6.81 inches in Merrick, 5.30 in Lido Beach. 
The one death that authorities said was weather-related was a fatal crash, on the westbound LIE in Melville, which occurred just before 5 a.m., during the height of the rainstorm. 
The rain wreaked havoc on the Wednesday morning commute. Nearly every major roadway in both counties reported full to partial closures because of flooding as early as 4:30 a.m. Wednesday and until past noon, according to the state Department of Transportation. 
Local roads were underwater as well. Suffolk County Sixth Precinct Police officers rescued an elderly man who became stranded in a flooded road in Coram Wednesday morning. 
"Officers Thomas Wilson and Matthew Detleff were on northbound North Ocean Avenue conducting traffic control and diverting motorists due to extreme flooding, when a motorist apparently became disoriented" due to the road closure, a release said. 
Anthony Monticciolo, 86, of Centereach, drove his 2008 Subaru into the flooded roadway "and his vehicle immediately became disabled" in waters 6 feet deep, which began seeping into his car. 
The officers waded into the flooded roadway and swam to the victim's car, removing him and bringing him to safety, police said. He was uninjured, police said. 
A PSEG Long Island spokesman said the utility considers the majority of Wednesday's outages to be weather-related. From midnight to 7:05 p.m. Wednesday there were 13,077 outages, and of those, 12,549 customers have had their power restored. As of 11 p.m., the remaining number of customers without power was down to 477. 
The rains caused massive flooding in some residential neighborhoods. 
Thomas Hall of Ocean Avenue in Massapequa woke up Wednesday morning to a flooded lawn. 
"I opened the curtains and saw the backyard was like a lake," said Hall, 50, a retired correction officer. 
He estimated the water had been about a foot and a half deep but a pump was working to drain off a low-lying portion of his yard Wednesday afternoon. 
The storm flooded roads and basements in Rocky Point, Selden and Farmingville, and the lobby of Brookhaven Town Hall was closed for three hours because of flooding, Town Supervisor Edward P. Romaine said. 
Romaine said he drove around town Wednesday morning observing "one flooding disaster after another" in northern and central sections of town. He estimated damage would be at least $1 million to $2 million. 
The heavy rainfall also had an impact on water quality at local beaches, affecting bathing and shellfish harvesting. 
Late Wednesday afternoon, the Suffolk County Health Department issued an advisory against bathing at 66 beaches until 7 p.m. Thursday as sampling is conducted because of the potential for elevated bacteria levels. 
The Department of Environmental Conservation also closed shellfish harvesting in most towns in Nassau and Suffolk counties until officials determine hazardous conditions no longer exist. 
With John Valenti, Gary Dymski, David M. Schwartz, Robert Brodsky, Mark Harrington, Ted Phillips and Carl MacGowan

LIWEAT14

LI dries out after historic rainstorm

liflood - cropped

Several weather records were broken Wednesday after 13.27 inches of rain fell at Islip Town's Long Island MacArthur Airport in what the Northeast Regional Climate Center calls a 24-hour 200-year storm event. 
That means that "rainfall of this magnitude is only expected to occur once in a 200-year period," according to the center's website. 
At play was a complex weather system that the National Weather Service had been monitoring for days, warning of the threat of flash flooding, in which an upper level disturbance, a low pressure area at the surface and very moist environment all combined over the area, said Tim Morrin, weather service meteorologist in Upton. 
The "bull's-eye" of the heaviest rainfall that deluged an area of western Suffolk was right near MacArthur Airport, he said. 
"A very small micro-scale event took place" in that area, one that is yet to be explained, he said, but that will likely be researched extensively, with follow-up papers written. Such a phenomenon is "impossible to forecast," he said, as "there's not enough skill in the computer models to pinpoint that kind of extreme" on such a small scale. 
As for hourly rainfall, 5.34 inches fell from 5 to 6 a.m. Wednesday at the airport in Ronkonkoma, followed by another 4.37 inches from 6 to 7 a.m., according to the Climate Center. They may have come back-to-back, but each is considered a 500-year event, said Jessica Spaccio, a climatologist with the center, which is at Cornell University. 
Records were also broken, and, "when we break a state record, that's pretty exciting," Spaccio said 
According to a preliminary report from the weather service, the previous New York State record for precipitation in a 24-hour period was broken. That was set Aug. 27 to 28, 2011, in Tannersville when 11.6 inches fell during what the service referred to as Hurricane/Tropical Storm Irene. 
With half the month still to go, Wednesday's rainfall also resulted in a record for the month of August, previously 13.78 inches set in 1990, the weather service said. The airport's August rainfall now stands at 13.88 inches, said the weather service, which has maintained official records for the airport for the past 30 years. 
While Long Island has been considered "abnormally dry" this year by the U.S. Drought Monitor, the 13.27 inches at the airport in just about one day exceeded normal rainfall for June, July and August combined -- 11.68 inches -- based on precipitation records from 1981 to 2010, according to the Climate Center. 
Wednesday's rainfall also broke the airport's all-time daily rainfall record, which was 6.74 inches set Aug. 24, 1990, Spaccio said. 
And as for the record rainfall for Aug. 13 -- beating that was a piece of cake, with the previous record for that day 0.91 inches, set in 2013, the weather service said. 
As for hourly rainfall amounts -- top honors now go to Wednesday from 5 to 6 a.m. when 5.34 inches fell at the airport, followed by 4.37 inches the very next hour, Spaccio said. The highest previous amount was 2.64 inches, which fell in one hour on July 18, 2007. That's based on data maintained since July 1996, she said.

LIRAIN14

Wednesday's rainfall a 'once in a 200-year' weather event, climatologists say

18. liFLOOD / mg

An area across four storefronts at the Bay Shore Commons shopping center was cordoned off by the Islip fire marshal Wednesday after the parking lot pavement buckled into a sinkhole about 24 feet in diameter and roughly 7 feet deep, according to maintenance technicians at the scene. 
Nicole Teahan, 33, an employee at Bagel Boss, its entrance about 50 feet from the sinkhole, was serving up bagels and coffee to the morning rush crowd just before 9 a.m. 
"Some customer came in and just started yelling, 'Call 911! You need to call 911! Hurry!' " Teahan said. "One of us went out and saw the sinkhole and the next thing I know, there was a truck with flashing lights on here." 
Teahan, who had driven over the spot a short time earlier on her way to work, said, "I guess that's what happens when you get 13 inches of rain." 
The National Weather Service said 13.27 inches of rain fell in Ronkonkoma at the town-owned airport Tuesday night into Wednesday in what forecasters said was a record.

LISINK14

Bay Shore parking lot buckles into sinkhole after historic rainfall

Before: Stop & Shop, Bay Shore

liRAIN cropped jcm

After pounding rains kept them inside all morning, John and Kristen Kelly were taking their four Black Russian Terriers for a walk Wednesday when one dog was swept away by a surging Carlls River. 
The couple, along with dozens of friends, strangers, fire and police officials, searched into the night, wading into the water and combing the shore between the flooded Southards Pond and Argyle Lake in Babylon and south down the Carlls River for the 120-pound dog, Yuri, with no luck as of early evening. 
"He was just going to get a drink of water, then he took one more step and just fell right in," an emotional Kristen Kelly, of West Babylon, said. John Kelly said the dog was leashed at the time but pulled free to go to the water. 
The couple said the rushing water swept Yuri south, swallowing him in seconds. Children nearby said they had seen the dog pop its head up above water after he traveled under a bridge at Park Avenue at about noon, Kristen Kelly said. 
"That was the last time anyone had seen him," she said, crying into her hands as neighbors hugged her. 
A social media campaign to find the dog attracted "hundreds" of people online to the cause, said Laura Haas, a neighbor and friend of the Kellys. 
John Kelly said his wife is a dog groomer who brings Yuri to work with her everyday, and the four dogs are like children to them, he said. "It's heartbreaking -- we're not giving up, but this is really becoming a recovery mission here right now," he said after the search went into the evening. "I don't think I'm getting my wife out of here anytime soon. She's determined to find his body, dead or alive." 
After Wednesday's storm dropped a record rainfall on Long Island, the raging current -- streaming from the bloated Southards Pond south to the Babylon marinas and down to the bay -- was the most powerful he's ever seen here, John Kelly said. "He just vanished, like out of thin air," he said. "He went under that bridge and poof, he was gone."

LIDOG14

West Babylon couple searches for dog lost in surging river

The storm didn't even have a name.
Rain of biblical proportions lashed Long Island Wednesday morning, another historic weather event in a region weary of making that kind of history.
It produced images we've seen before, and some we've never glimpsed. It generated tales of woe and stories of heroism. It reminded us that we might be battered but we're also resilient, and we're getting better at responding to Mother Nature's fiercest jabs.
The torrent should highlight the limits of our aging infrastructure and strengthen imperatives to keep it strong, with fallback options as failures mount. The work will be costly, but it must be done.
We've had rain before, but not like this. More than 13 inches fell in some places in a few hours, easily eclipsing the state record for a 24-hour period. The flooding was severe -- and often in places, like the middle of the Island, that had not experienced that before.
Roads and parking lots became rivers and ponds. Portions of 11 major highways and innumerable smaller roads were closed, all at the same time. Most Long Island Rail Road branches had delays or cancellations and the Port Jefferson line was shut down east of Huntington. For a while, you really couldn't get there from here, unless you had a kayak.
Basements that never had seen a drop filled with water, thousands lost power, hundreds of cars were stranded, boats were overturned and shellfishing areas were closed due to bacteria from all the runoff. One person died.
Some of the images were striking -- like trains running at the Bay Shore station while cars in the parking lot had water up to their windows. And kids with nets wading through streets in West Islip looking for -- and finding -- fish from backyard ponds.
As happened with Irene and Sandy, the blizzard called Nemo and the wildfires that ravaged central Suffolk County, the storm again highlighted the work of our first responders. The North Babylon Fire Department deserves special commendation for rescuing the occupants of as many as 50 cars stuck on the Southern State Parkway in North Babylon. Ironically, the firefighters ferried drivers to safety with the same brush trucks used to fight wildfires.
Just as Sandy taught us that we must strengthen our coastline, this downpour exposed more of our vulnerabilities. That much rain in that short of a period is always going to overwhelm drainage systems designed to handle just a 5-inch storm within 24 hours. But where we can act to make a difference, we should. In West Hills, for example, a redesign project on Jericho Turnpike kept a chronically flooded part of the roadway open. Reports Wednesday of sewer backups in Bay Shore and septic failures elsewhere remind us of the need to make sure those systems are sound.
We live on an island with a high water table. Life here will always be precarious to some degree. And predictions by climate scientists that extreme weather will only become more frequent are disquieting. But that should be a spur to action.
We got through this one. Again. Now we must continue to improve our infrastructure and keep our emergency response services in peak form so we're not paralyzed once more by the natural disasters that inevitably will follow.

Opinion

VPSTORM14

Editorial: A drenching reminder to keep improving

29. liRAIN /lii -- cropped

One driver was killed Wednesday morning in a what police said appears to be a storm-related two-vehicle crash on the westbound Long Island Expressway in Melville. 
Suffolk County police said the crash occurred east of Exit 49, Route 110, just before 5 a.m. -- at the height of the morning storm that deluged some sections of Long Island with more than 13 inches of rain. 
Police said a male driver lost control of a Jeep Liberty, was struck from behind by a tractor trailer and then hit the cement center divider and was engulfed in flames. 
The driver of the Jeep was pronounced dead at the scene, police said in a news release. The man's name is being withheld pending positive identification by the Suffolk County medical examiner. 
Joseph Bonilla Jr., 52, of Central Islip, the driver of the tractor trailer, suffered minor injuries. The tractor trailer, owned by JVB Transport, was carrying waste oil, police said. 
"Following a preliminary investigation, the crash appears to be weather-related," the news release said. 
The investigation is continuing. Anyone with information can call the Second Squad at 631-854-8252. 
With Gary Dymski

LIFATA14

1 dead in LIE crash that was storm-related, cops say

Today's record-setting rain broke multiple state records and left destruction across the island.&nbsp; 
Find the latest updates below from readers and reporters as LI recovers. Share your photos or stories with the hashtag #LIRain on social media. 
Find Newsday's main story on the storm, power outages and flooding at <a href="http://nwsdy.li/1q89J14">http://nwsdy.li/1q89J14</a>. 
<iframe frameborder="0" height="700" src="//embed.scribblelive.com/Embed/v7.aspx?Id=769621&amp;ThemeId=15521" width="450"></iframe>

Latest updates: LIers share storm aftermath

Long Island news, weather, traffic, schools and LIRR updates for Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2014

LIers share flooding aftermath

LINOW081314

Complete coverage: Record rainfall on LI, August 13, 2014

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