A thunderstorm lands on Fourth of July weekend.
Photo: Stephen Wilkes
Odysseus isn’t the only one braving storms this year. New York’s summer weather has been a trial and a tribulation, intense heat — temperatures reached over 100 degrees in Central Park on the hottest day in July — alternating with gales and floods. “We’re on track to double our average precipitation for August,” says Alex Gallagher, a meteorologist at NYC Emergency Management. “Four out of the five most intense flooding events in the last five years happened this year.”
That won’t come as a great surprise to anyone who’s had to wring themselves out over a storm drain in the past couple of months. Stomp-and-holler virtuoso Noah Kahan had to cancel his July appearance at Citi Field when storm clouds threatened. Public World Cup watch parties at Brooklyn Bridge Park and the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Queens were canceled. The Yankees have been rained out of four games so far, and an outdoor concert for 5,000 in Bryant Park, a tribute to Ella Fitzgerald, was scuppered. Cindy Adams, the weather vane of the New York Post, took to her column to carp, “NYC’s summer weather has been just like how we all feel — lousy.” Over the Fourth of July weekend, a series of storms skimmed the south of the city, pummeling Coney Island and the Rockaways with sand and sending beach umbrellas spinning like tops. Two tornadoes, a metro-area rarity, upped the ante in August, whipping through parts of Queens and Long Island.
It’s an aggravation; it’s a money pit. Mayor Mamdani just announced he’d be increasing the budget of the Orwellian-sounding Bureau of Coastal Resilience to more than $43 million to shore up floodgates. And it’s not over yet. Summer temperatures are expected to last into October, and El Niño is currently gathering strength in the Pacific. No rest, it seems, for the storm sentries. “Believe me,” Gallagher says, ringing off. “I wish autumn would get here, too.”
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If you prefer to read in print, you can also find this article in the August 24, 2026, issue of
New York Magazine.
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If you prefer to read in print, you can also find this article in the August 24, 2026, issue of
New York Magazine.