Each year when Election Day comes around in early November, I remember back to a powerful coastal storm that pounded our Tri-State region back on Election Day in 1977. The storm produced rainfall records across our region that still stand to this day and probably will for many years to come. The storm had two rounds to it. The first round of heavy rain combined with strong east to northeast winds swept through our region during the day on Monday November 7. The rain was heavy enough to produce urban and poor drainage flooding. Driving and walking became difficult as the rain and wind caused a lot of leaves to fall off the trees. The fall foliage was at peak levels throughout the area, so it was no surprise to see them fall in the quantity they did. The rain and wind abated as we went into the evening hours. We went into a lull during the night, but the worst of the storm was yet to come.
As we awoke on Election morning Tuesday November 8, voting was not the only story that dominated the news. It was clear that we were going to be in for a potentially dangerous weather day. The wind and rain we had endured the day before was about to return. The intensity of the rain quickly increased before schools opened. By late morning the rain had become torrential with rates of 1 inch per hour. By the time the rain finally began to taper off late in the afternoon, a record 7.40 inches had fallen for the date at Central Park New York. Not only was it a new record for November 8, but it still stands as the most rain ever for any day in November at the park since records began there in 1869. In addition to that record at the park, the storm also set a 24 hour record rainfall for November 7-8 of 8.09 inches.
These record rains led to damaging floods across the entire region. The urban areas experienced significant street, highway and basement flooding. Some roads were totally impassable. Over inland areas, the torrential rains led to stream and river flooding across the Tri-State region. It took days before the flood waters receded in some areas and a lot of damage was left behind. It is not unusual for the East Coast to get heavy rains during November, but this storm was one for the record books in our area. It is one that I will never forget. I am predicting we will see some rain and wind events this November, but I do not think we will have a repeat of 1977. As I always say however, we'll see what Mother Nature has in store for us.
Meteorologist Iggy Camporeale
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This rainstorm was preceded by 1.52 inches of rain the day before. November 8, 1977 was a colder day with the temps around 50. The wind would make you miserable if you were not dressed properly. The rain was falling steadily at 7:00 in the morning. My black raincoat and its liner - then my favorite - had dried out from the previous day's rain. My mother, knowing that I would assuredly want to wear it again, had put it in the furnace closet to get it toasty warm before I put it on. She rather gently - knowing how much I loved wearing my raincoat - suggested that I at least take my poncho and keep it folded in my school bag in preparation for when we were to get heavy rain later in the day when I was walking the mile home from school. So I folded and put my long flowing fully double-sided and substantial rain poncho into my school bag and sunk my arms into my warm zip-lined raincoat.
ReplyDeleteMy mother then put her on her own raincoat and drove me to junior high school through what was now heavy rain. Snuggling into the warmly lined raincoat, we arrived at school and getting out of the car I turned my raincoat collar up against what was now a full downpour. My mother seemed glad that I was appropriately raincoated. As the shoulders of my dress raincoat got the saturated look of being exposed to a downpour, we were probably both glad that I had my serious rain poncho reserved in my school bag. I knew that I would both be in need of it and wearing for the long walk home that afternoon.
Having endured and most likely having been soaked by the first waves of rain on Monday, junior high students were absolutely made to wear their raincoats, ponchos, and slickers to school on Tuesday November 8th in protection for the day's relentless driving downpour. Even if they had to fit into outgrown rain gear and grade school slickers, once inside the building, I discovered that we were all similarly attired for this unforgettable drenching deluge. It was fun to watch school athletes wearing their grade school yellow rubber rain slickers complete with helmet hoods and brass clasp closures once again as 9th grade freshmen. Others wore big flowing team rain ponchos for the first time in two years since an extended weeklong period of heavy rain in September 1975 back in the 7th grade. Best of all, were the freshman girls wearing their dress Sunday shower-resistant Easter coats barely fitting over their emerging adolescent maturity. Obviously it was the best rainwear they had available for this day of heavy rain: short of borrowing their mother's own raincoat or her zip-lined trenchcoat. I wonder what amount of negotiation went on between mothers and teenage daughters, this day of already heavy soaking downpours. Was there a choice between wearing the rubberized nylon raincoats of grade school or stepping up into an adult beige raincoat. By 11:00AM, the rainstorm which would deliver almost seven inches of rain for the rest of the day – falling at a rate of .75 of an inch per hour - materialized in full force. All through the last two periods of classes, we would be looking out the classroom windows on the cascading driving rain and lamenting that no amount of rainwear was going to protect us on our walk home. Soon we were at our lockers pulling on our raincoats and venturing out into the buckets of monsoon rain which pounded down on my poncho and raincoat combination and kept everybody huddled under the barrier of whatever they were wearing, soaking both raincoats as well as adolescent decorum thoroughly. Sage and well-chosen adolescent words for the occasion of a monsoon rainstorm were pointed at cursing the streaming wet raincoats which the teenagers were forced to wear that morning. Eventually everyone arrived after their mile walk home, this time even more thoroughly drenched then in the typical November heavy rains earlier in the day. The rains cascaded, buffeted and drilled at my big and flowing rubber rain poncho worn over my black raincoat with its sleeves gleaming and thoroughly wet.