Several floods registered in New York before the approach of Storm Elsa

Several subway stations were flooded and large roads were closed on Thursday in New York, where the arrival of Storm Elsa threatened new flooding on Friday.

Between 5 and 10 cm of water fell during a series of storms over New York and its region on Thursday afternoon, the NWS weather service said, “causing flooding in some places.”

Metro users posted videos on Twitter of some flooded stations. In one, people were seen waist-deep in water, trying to cross a blackish pool to reach the platforms.

“Lines 1 and A registered a lot of flooding at the stations”, acknowledged Thursday night Sarah Feinberg, acting head of the MTA, the New York public transportation authority, at a press conference.

Some highway axes, especially in the Bronx, were temporarily closed, causing traffic problems when leaving work.

The NWS warned of possible new floods until Friday morning, with the expected arrival in the northeastern United States of heavy rains pushed by Storm Elsa, which has already passed through the Caribbean and Florida.

Rains in New York

Elsa is located 200 km west-southwest of Norfolk (Virginia) and about 485 km from New Jersey City, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) indicated in its bulletin.

The system is moving rapidly in a northeast direction at a travel speed of 33 kilometers per hour.

A large swath on the east coast of the United States, running from the South Santee River in South Carolina to Sandy Hook in New Jersey, is under a storm watch from Elsa, whose tropical-storm-force winds extend up to about 260 kilometers per hour from its center.

Elsa made landfall as a storm Wednesday in Taylor County, on Florida’s northwest coast, and continued through eastern Georgia late that day, where some tornadoes were reported and rain is still expected on Friday.

According to the Jacksonville fire department, northeast Florida, a person died on a road when a tree uprooted by the winds associated with the storm fell on top of his vehicle.

At the Submarine Kings Bay naval base, in southeastern Georgia, a tornado was registered that left at least a dozen injured, some of whom had to be transferred to medical centers but none seriously, as said the spokesman for the base Scott Bassett to NBC News.