It started as another stormy Thursday across the Northeast.
Then, in Jersey City, New Jersey, the rain became something else entirely.
Water rushed onto streets.
Drivers who had been trying to get home suddenly found themselves surrounded.
Cars stalled.
Doors became difficult to open safely.
And as the water continued rising, emergency crews realized this wasn’t going to be an ordinary roadside rescue.
They needed boats.
Not on a river.
Not along the coast.
In the middle of city streets.
By the time the emergency was under control, Jersey City officials said 69 people had been rescued from vehicles overtaken by flash flooding. First responders waded through deep water and used small inflatable boats to reach stranded drivers. (AP News)
And Jersey City wasn’t the only place in trouble.
The same storm system was creating chaos across the Northeast — flooding a major New York expressway and producing tornadoes in places where residents rarely expect to see them.
The water rose fast
Flash flooding is frightening precisely because a familiar street can become dangerous in minutes.
A driver sees water ahead and thinks:
I’ve driven through worse.
But water hides the road underneath it.
You can’t easily tell whether pavement has washed away, how deep the water actually is or whether a current is strong enough to move a vehicle.
In Jersey City, Thursday’s storm demonstrated just how quickly that calculation can go wrong.
Heavy rain overwhelmed roads, and vehicle after vehicle became stranded.
Then emergency calls began coming in.
According to Mayor James Solomon, crews ultimately rescued 69 people trapped in flooded vehicles. (AP News)
The images told the story even better than the number.
Roads looked more like waterways.
Cars sat surrounded by muddy floodwater.
And rescuers maneuvered inflatable boats through streets normally packed with traffic.
Imagine realizing your car isn’t going anywhere
At first, perhaps you believe the engine will get you through.
Then the car slows.
The water rises around the tires.
It reaches the bottom of the doors.
Traffic ahead stops moving.
Suddenly the vehicle that normally protects you from the outside world has become the place you’re trying to escape.
And this is where flooding becomes deceptive.
People tend to underestimate moving water because it doesn’t look as violent as fire or a tornado.
But water doesn’t need to look dramatic to become powerful.
Once a vehicle begins losing traction, the driver loses control.
And if water continues rising, waiting inside can become increasingly dangerous.
For dozens of people in Jersey City, emergency crews became the only safe way out.
Rescuers entered the flooded streets
First responders didn’t simply wait for the water to disappear.
They went in.
Crews waded through flooded roads while small inflatable boats were deployed to reach people stranded inside vehicles. (The Independent)
One by one, people were brought out.
Sixty-nine rescues.
And remarkably, despite the scale of the flooding and the severe weather across the region, authorities reported no serious injuries from the broader storm outbreak. (AP News)
But while rescue crews were navigating flooded streets in New Jersey, something dramatic was happening just across the region.
In New York City, a major expressway disappeared under water
The storm hammered New York as well.
In Queens, flooding forced authorities to shut down portions of the Long Island Expressway in both directions.
Images showed lines of vehicles stopped as emergency personnel moved through the floodwater. (AP News)
For anyone familiar with New York, the Long Island Expressway isn’t some tiny country road.
It’s one of the region’s major transportation arteries.
And suddenly, water had brought it to a halt.
Public transportation was affected too.
Heavy rain caused problems for New York City’s subway system, with water on tracks contributing to suspensions and delays on multiple lines. (ABC7 New York)
But the strangest part of the storm was still developing.
Something was forming over the ocean
At Atlantic Beach on Long Island, people began seeing something ominous over the water.
A rotating column descended toward the Atlantic.
It was a waterspout.
Then it moved toward shore.
And the moment it reached land, it became something else:
a tornado.
The National Weather Service later confirmed that a tornado had touched down at Atlantic Beach after beginning as a waterspout over the ocean. (AP News)
Suddenly, residents weren’t dealing only with flooding.
They were watching debris fly through the air.
The tornado tore into a beach club
The Sun and Surf Beach Club at Atlantic Beach took a direct hit.
Structures were damaged.
Cabanas were torn apart.
Furniture and debris were scattered.
More than 30 cabanas that had been occupied by over 100 guests were destroyed, according to local reporting immediately after the storm. One person suffered a minor head injury. (ABC7 New York)
Emergency teams searched through the damaged area to ensure nobody was trapped.
Nassau County declared a state of emergency as officials assessed the destruction.
And somehow, despite how dramatic the images looked, there were no reports of serious injuries or deaths there. (AP News)
That alone was remarkable.
But the storm wasn’t finished.
Delaware was hit too
Farther south, residents in Dover, Delaware, faced their own terrifying scene.
The National Weather Service confirmed that a tornado touched down in the state capital.
Photos and videos showed significant damage.
The roof of a motel was blown off.
Other buildings along Route 13 were damaged.
Trees and utility lines came down.
More than 1,000 customers initially lost electricity in the affected area, although most had service restored within hours. (AP News)
Again, there was good news amid the destruction:
Officials reported no serious injuries.
Three states.
Flooded roads.
Vehicle rescues.
Tornadoes.
All from the same period of severe weather.
But the Jersey City number stands out: 69
It’s easy to read “69 people rescued” and move on.
But think about what that actually represents.
Sixty-nine individual moments when someone realized:
I can’t get out of this by myself.
Some may have been alone.
Others may have had passengers.
Someone may have been calling a spouse.
Someone else may have been wondering whether abandoning the car was safer than staying inside.
And somewhere outside, rescuers were moving from vehicle to vehicle.
That’s why officials repeatedly warn people never to assume a flooded roadway is safe simply because another vehicle attempted to cross it.
A car is heavy.
But floodwater can be astonishingly powerful.
The most dangerous decision can happen before you enter the water
Flash-flood safety advice often sounds almost too simple:
Turn around. Don’t drown.
There’s a reason that phrase has survived for years.
Once a vehicle enters floodwater, options disappear quickly.
The driver may not know how deep the water becomes farther ahead.
A stalled vehicle can be pushed.
Electrical systems can fail.
Doors can become difficult to open.
And getting out may mean stepping into moving water whose depth and current are impossible to judge.
The safest rescue is the one emergency crews never need to perform.
If a road is flooded, don’t test it.
Find another route.
Thursday’s storm showed how quickly conditions can change
One of the striking things about this event is the variety of hazards produced within the same region.
In Jersey City:
flash flooding and dozens of vehicle rescues.
In Queens:
a major expressway closed by water.
At Atlantic Beach:
a waterspout moved ashore and became a tornado.
In Dover:
another tornado damaged buildings and infrastructure. (AP News)
For people living in the Northeast, tornadoes can feel like something that happens somewhere else.
Oklahoma.
Kansas.
Texas.
The Great Plains.
But tornadoes can occur in the Northeast too.
And this storm provided a dramatic reminder.
At Atlantic Beach, people watched it come from the water
There’s something particularly unsettling about a waterspout moving toward land.
From a distance, it can almost look mesmerizing.
A dark funnel extending toward the ocean.
People pull out phones.
They record.
They watch.
But once that circulation moves ashore, the situation changes immediately.
At Atlantic Beach, the tornado damaged the beach club and sent debris flying.
Afterward, the scene looked as though the storm had simply picked up pieces of the property and thrown them around.
Yet the storm’s most important statistic remained:
No serious injuries were reported. (AP News)
Property can be rebuilt.
People can’t.
In Jersey City, the photographs looked almost unreal
That’s what made the flooding so shareable online.
These weren’t images from a hurricane hitting a distant coastline.
They showed an American city street transformed into something that required a boat.
A vehicle sat in water.
Emergency crews moved around it.
Buildings and street signs remained exactly where they always were.
Everything looked normal except for one thing:
the street had become a river.
And that’s what makes flash flooding psychologically deceptive.
The environment is familiar.
The danger isn’t.
The rescuers had to make dozens of trips
Every stranded vehicle creates its own problem.
Where are the occupants?
Can they safely open the doors?
How deep is the water?
Is the vehicle stable?
Is the current increasing?
Does anyone need medical assistance?
Are children or older adults inside?
Can rescuers reach the vehicle on foot, or is a boat necessary?
Multiply those questions across dozens of vehicles and you begin to understand the scale of the operation.
Jersey City crews answered them again and again until 69 people were safely removed from danger. (AP News)
Then the storm moved on
That’s another strange thing about severe weather.
Hours earlier, streets can look apocalyptic.
Then the rain stops.
The water begins receding.
Traffic slowly returns.
People emerge.
Tow trucks arrive.
Cleanup crews start working.
The city looks familiar again.
But the aftermath tells you what happened.
Water-damaged vehicles.
Debris.
Mud.
Closed roads.
Damaged buildings.
Power crews repairing lines.
And residents swapping stories about how close things came.
Across the Northeast, Friday became a day of cleanup and damage assessment. (AP News)
Officials went looking at the tornado paths
After a tornado strikes, meteorologists don’t simply rely on viral videos.
National Weather Service teams inspect damage.
They look at the direction debris fell.
They examine structural damage.
They map the path.
Those clues help determine what happened and how strong the tornado was.
Crews assessed damage in both Delaware and Long Island following Thursday’s storms. (AP News)
At Atlantic Beach, they confirmed the unusual sequence:
A waterspout had formed over the Atlantic.
Then it came ashore.
Then it became a tornado.
For the people standing nearby, however, the technical terminology probably mattered much less than what they saw:
a funnel coming toward them.
And Jersey City had its own lesson
There didn’t need to be a tornado directly over those 69 drivers.
Water was enough.
That’s perhaps the most useful takeaway from the entire event.
Weather doesn’t have to look spectacular to become life-threatening.
A tornado announces itself dramatically.
Flash flooding may simply look like a deeper puddle.
Until you drive into it.
Then suddenly your wheels lose contact.
The engine stops.
Water reaches the doors.
And someone is calling emergency services.
Cars can be replaced
For many of the people rescued Thursday, the financial aftermath may still be painful.
Flood damage can destroy engines, electrical systems and interiors.
Some vehicles may never return to the road.
Insurance claims follow.
Repairs.
Tow trucks.
Rental cars.
All the tedious consequences that remain after the dramatic rescue footage disappears from social media.
But there’s an important difference between losing a car and losing a person.
The vehicle can be replaced.
That’s why emergency officials would rather pull someone out early than have them wait until the situation becomes desperate.
The entire Northeast was reminded how unpredictable summer weather can be
August often brings heat and humidity.
Those conditions can also fuel powerful thunderstorms.
And when enormous amounts of rain fall over paved urban environments, water has fewer places to go.
Concrete doesn’t absorb rainfall like soil.
Neither does asphalt.
Drainage systems can become overwhelmed.
Low-lying roads fill.
Underpasses become traps.
Within minutes, a normal commute can become an emergency.
That’s essentially what residents watched unfold.
And this time, cameras captured it.
One image summed up the entire storm
Not the tornado.
Not the damaged beach club.
Not the motel roof ripped away in Delaware.
A little inflatable rescue boat on a Jersey City street.
Because there is something fundamentally wrong-looking about a boat floating where cars are supposed to drive.
It immediately tells you how badly conditions deteriorated.
The road was no longer functioning as a road.
And the people inside the cars were no longer commuters.
They were people waiting to be rescued.
Sixty-nine people eventually made it out
That is the number worth remembering.
Not because it’s shocking.
Because every one of those 69 rescues ended the way you want an emergency to end.
Someone reached them.
Someone helped them out.
Someone got them to safety.
Across the broader storm zone, despite tornado damage, flooded highways, power outages and dramatic rescue operations, officials reported no serious injuries. (AP News)
That’s an extraordinarily fortunate ending considering the images that emerged afterward.
The cars can dry out or be replaced.
The roads can reopen.
The cabanas can be rebuilt.
Power lines can go back up.
And the floodwater eventually disappears.
But the next time the sky turns black and water starts covering a roadway, the photographs from Jersey City are worth remembering.
Because on August 20, dozens of drivers discovered just how quickly an ordinary street can stop being a street.
And when 69 people needed a way out, rescuers didn’t arrive with tow trucks.
They arrived with boats.
For more tales of incredible rescues, read about how rescuers found two people alive after five days lost at sea, or what happened when three people climbed out of a Manhattan manhole. And for another story of a community facing a sudden danger, check out how a small detail changed a fire investigation in Reno.
