New York City is prone to flooding during heavy rainfall, and the city\u2019s aging stormwater and sewer infrastructure doesn\u2019t help.<\/p>\n
According to the New York State Climate Assessment, total precipitation in New York City is projected to increase between 4% and 11% by the 2050s relative to the 1981\u20132010 average.<\/p>\n
As climate change increases the frequency and intensity of flash flooding in the city, \u201cNYC Now\u201d host Janae Pierre spoke to Furhana Husani, Director of Programs and Climate Initiatives at The Waterfront Alliance, a New York City-based climate resilience nonprofit, to understand why some neighborhoods flood more than others, what tools exist to track it, and what New Yorkers can do next time a flood warning hits.<\/p>\n
Their conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity:<\/p>\n
Janae Pierre: We’ve had a lot of really big storms so far this year. What’s been your biggest challenge in 2026 so far?<\/p>\n
Furhana Husani: Keeping up. The weather changes and the weather patterns have been so extensive recently that it\u2019s hard to keep track of when these extreme weather events are happening. And one of the things that I hear often is that \u201cit doesn\u2019t flood here.” But that\u2019s because our perception of flooding is very different from what it actually is.<\/p>\n
Can you break down what exactly flooding is and what it looks like?<\/p>\n
There\u2019s stormwater flooding, coastal flooding and groundwater flooding.<\/p>\n
Stormwater flooding is the more obvious one. The big rain events, such as May 20, 2026, where we saw people being swept away in the street<\/a>. It happens after extreme heat, where all that warm air carries rain and water and drops it very quickly in a short amount of time \u2014 these are called cloudburst events.<\/p>\n Coastal flooding where we see storm surges bumping up against the water\u2019s edge and causing a lot of damage to coastal neighborhoods.<\/p>\n Groundwater flooding is the invisible kind, the kind that seeps up from the ground into our basements.<\/p>\n So, we often see social media posts of the sort of flooding going into the subway systems, but flooding is often less dramatic than that.<\/p>\n How is this related to climate change?<\/p>\n The world is getting hotter. Warmer air holds more moisture, so we see intense rainfall particularly after an extreme heat event. What\u2019s interesting is that the Northeast has experienced about a 60% increase in the heaviest rain events over the past century. So this is a good example of how climate change is actually making a huge impact. And our infrastructure was not built for this.<\/p>\n Is flood damage generally covered by renter\u2019s insurance?<\/p>\n That\u2019s a complicated question. Not always, but there\u2019s an organization that helps navigate the insurance landscape called Flood Help NY<\/a>. You can put in your ZIP code and they\u2019ll tell you what your risk is, they\u2019ll tell you how to navigate the complications of flood insurance, and they\u2019ll also help you get access to grants and loans to retrofit your home.<\/p>\n You mentioned you speak to people who say they don\u2019t experience flooding, why is flooding hitting some neighborhoods much harder than others?<\/p>\n It\u2019s historic disinvestment. One of the biggest factors behind this is historic redlining<\/a>. We work heavily in the South Bronx, in Red Hook, in Southeast Queens, in Elmhurst, Flushing Corona. These are a lot of the historically disinvested and redlined neighborhoods, and you\u2019ll also see a lot of overlap for where the most flood risk is as well. Something that we\u2019re really trying to understand is how do we now get particular neighborhoods to build preparedness? This infrastructure takes years to improve and invest in.<\/p>\n What is the city doing to acknowledge all of that?<\/p>\n Actually, quite a bit. But the issue is these planning efforts require decades. There are smaller things that can be done, which the city is starting to look into, such as these catch basins (also known as stormdrains<\/a>). Many of them get filled up with garbage, and one of the things we could do is as simple as putting garbage cans on as many street blocks as possible, to help reduce the amount of literal garbage on catch basins.<\/p>\n Can you talk about the network of flood sensors going up across the city?<\/p>\n