AccuWeather flooding expert Alex Sosnowski was live on the AccuWeather Network on July 31 to discuss the flash flood risk in the Northeast.

Northeastern United States

More than 43 million residents across the Northeastern United States are under threat from potentially life-threatening flash flooding as a result of intense rainfall. Meteorologists note that the region is experiencing rainfall totals equivalent to the entire month of July in a short period, with some areas expected to exceed local flash flood thresholds. 

Urban centers such as New York City are especially at risk due to the prevalence of paved surfaces, which accelerate runoff and flooding. The risk is heightened for those traveling during peak rainfall periods, with warnings that roads may quickly become hazardous. Additional heavy rain is also forecast for the southeastern United States, where even higher rainfall totals are expected, further increasing the risk of flash flooding.

43 million face life-threatening flood risk in the Northeast

Joining me right now is Acuva, the flooding expert, Alex Sosnowski. You know, Alex, we're talking off camera about this. We're going to show you the rainfall map here in a second. And this kind of a rainfall map to me is a little unusual for the area and scope for this time of the year. Yeah, especially without a tropical system trying to help things out. What you got going on, though, as you pointed out, is that front is lifting the air. Okay, it's lifting the air and the jet stream pattern is causing the downpours that are generated, the thunderstorms that are generated to repeat, line up in streets. And it's going to kind of leaf out into a mosaic pattern here like you see. That kind of rainfall that we're showing there, that broad area, two to four inches, that's equivalent pretty much to the entire rainfall for all of July in these places. Wow. Now, flash flood guidance. What we're going to talk about now is how much rain has to occur to produce widespread flash flooding. It will begin in eastern Pennsylvania and northern, northeastern Maryland. And I mean, it's a pretty high threshold, isn't it, for flash flooding? Yeah, it is. The sun this time of the year is brutal. It dries the topsoil out and that can have a huge effect on this. But what this doesn't account for when we talk about the flash flood guidance is, it doesn't account for paved surfaces. There's a lot of pavement in the mid-Atlantic, in the northeast, a lot of rooftops. That creates rapid runoff. So this type of rainfall here, we're going to be close to these thresholds here for flash flooding in all cases. In some cases, we're going to exceed it. In some cases, we'll come in a little bit shy. But the thing to point out here is, we look at that one hour rainfall, you may get close to two inches of rain in a half an hour. And then another downpour, you know, that moves on and another downpour comes along. So you're accumulating that rainfall and repeating it. What about New York City? Notice, and I think perhaps what you just mentioned, the threshold here is much lower. This is a concern. Yes. You can notice here that the rainfall amounts here, the threshold is a lot lower. Plus, we have a lot of pavement, a lot of rooftops around New York City. What I can tell you here looking at this is, if you're working a day shift, I know you had an excuse there to stay home, work from home. If you're working a day shift and you're already committed to go to work, this is a day you want to leave early. If you're working a second shift, you'll probably want to come into work early if you can't work from home. I want to end with the flash flood guide in southwestern Massachusetts, Connecticut. It's kind of in between New York City and what we saw across eastern Pennsylvania. Yeah. All these rainfall amounts are significant here, and I think we can get close to all of these here. In some places, we're going to exceed the threshold, and some places come in a little bit shy. But if you're prone to flooding, if you drive along a stretch of road that drains poorly, when these downpours kind of go through, generally from 6 p.m. to midnight, when the bulk of this stuff is going to hit, that's when you can run into problems here. The roadway could be flooded, and you can run into problems. You could ruin your car, and more importantly, you could put yourself in a life-threatening situation. Really quickly, I know you do have some concern across the southeast as we head into the weekend. Yeah. If you look at the rainfall totals here for this event coming up, pretty much targeting the weekend here, the amounts are almost double what we're going to see in the northeast here coming up Thursday into early Friday. This stuff in the southeast here is going to be especially nasty. There's some tropical connection to it over time, but if you look at the downpour area there, there's a broad area where we have 2 to 4 inches of rain forecast, and there's a good patch there where 4 to 8 inches of rain is coming with an accurate weather storm max of 12 inches. And probably about half of that can occur in several hours. So this is a big problem for these places, whether you need the rain or not. There's going to be some flash flooding problems with this. Definite dangers on the roads. AccuWeather flooding expert Alex Isnowski, thanks for joining us here on AccuWeather Early.

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