LEVITTOWN, N.Y. — Flooding posed a threat across the Northeast on Friday on the heels of a pounding storm that submerged cars, cut power to thousands and forced evacuations as it crept up the East Coast.
The rain had largely subsided in hard-hit Pennsylvania, New York and New England by Friday evening. But flood warnings and watches remained in effect in areas that were drenched with more precipitation than they usually get in months — up to 6 inches in mere hours in some places.
The storm was blamed for five deaths in North Carolina on Thursday and a sixth in Pennsylvania on Friday — a woman who apparently drove her car into a rain-swollen creek before daybreak.
A great swath of the Northeast was soaked by the morning commute, including New York City and Philadelphia.
Firefighters in the Philadelphia area used a ladder truck to pull residents through the upper-floor windows of a building. Cars were submerged up to their windows, and one man found another vehicle floating atop his. “I’m a little frustrated, but what can you do? This is just nature,” said 33-year-old graphic artist Ismail Dibona.
The National Weather Service extended a flood watch for Vermont to late Friday, and the Red Cross opened a shelter in Rutland. In New Jersey, some rivers were above flood stage.
The storm drove up the Eastern Seaboard from the Carolinas to Maine on Thursday, the worst of it falling in North Carolina, where Jacksonville took on 12 inches in six hours — nearly a quarter of its typical annual rainfall.
Meteorologist Tim Armstrong of the National Weather Service in Wilmington, N.C., declared the 22.54 inches to be the rainiest five-day period there that he could find on record since 1871. The rain was part of a system moving ahead of the remnants of Tropical Storm Nicole.
