"Deluge Brings New York to Its Knees"

That's the lead story on the NY Times web site tonight. And it's completely true.

I was woken at 5:00 this morning (along with most of New York) by bright flashes of lightning and violent cracks of thunder. Almost two inches of rain fell between 6:00 and 7:00 am alone. There was even a tornado in Brooklyn that blew out windows and left the twisted wreckage of cars in the street. (Oda's in-laws were one of the impacted homes, losing a number of windows from the sounds of it.)

Between 7:00 and 8:00, the rain let up, but it was already over 85 degrees and it was just like walking out into a sauna. According to the giant time/temperature indicator outside our office window, it hit at least 95 degrees today -- it was definitely the most disgusting, humid, sweaty day I've experienced yet this summer.

Many main roads were under water, but even more debilitating was that the sudden downpour sent water gushing into subway tunnels, paralyzing the mass transit system just before the busy morning commute. Oda and I are lucky enough that we live close enough to the office to walk, but most of our colleagues were significantly delayed because of the subway disruption and some weren't able to make it to work at all.

Just to give you a sense of how complete the chaos was, here was a sign posted in Penn Station:

“No trains at this time: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, N, R, S, Q, W, V, F, L, J, 7 to Queens.”

Um, that's pretty much ALL the trains to Queens.

Many trains still weren't running by the time the afternoon commute rolled around.

Oh, and by the way, this is the same darn storm that kept me in Chicago all night on Monday. I talked to a colleague in Chicago tonight and he said they're sending another big storm our way.

Is there a Noah out there anywhere?? We may need your services.