As the remnants of Hurricane Ida lash the East Coast, an iconic New York landmark just smashed an incredible record for rainfall in a single hour.
According to the National Weather Service, New York’s Central Park reported a staggering 3.15 inches of rain between 8:51 p.m. and 9:51 p.m. Eastern time Wednesday, marking the most rain that the park has ever recorded in a one-hour period.
Incredibly, the previous one-hour record for the park was less than two weeks old, having been set on Aug. 21 when 1.91 inches of rain were recorded within an hour at Central Park.
To put the breathtaking rainfall into perspective, NBC 5 Storm Team Meteorologist Paul Deanno compared it to the monthly precipitation that the city of Chicago can expect in September:
The city of Chicago, on average, receives 3.19 inches of rain in the month of September, just a scant .04 inches of rain more than what Central Park received in a one-hour period on Wednesday.
Even more remarkably, the NWS in New York issued a flash flood emergency alert for the city for the first time in history as the rain continued to fall Wednesday.
Local
The remnants of Ida, which have lashed the east coast with severe weather, also sparked several tornado warnings in both New York and in New Jersey, according to officials.
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