What If Hurricane Earl (Or Any Major Hurricane) Comes To New York?

Attention: If a major hurricane makes direct landfall in New York, we’re all completely effed.

Hold onto your hats New Yorkers, we could be in for a bumpy ride this Labor Day weekend. While the Category 3 monster Hurricane Earl is not expected to make direct landfall here in New York, we could experience some nasty leftovers if it continues on its current West-bound course.

What does that mean exactly? Well, “Wall Street Journal” writer and meteorologist, Eric Holthaus, laid out a pretty descriptive scene of what would happen. Let’s just say it isn’t pretty.

His Wednesday-through-Saturday timeline is as such:

Wednesday afternoon: Tropical storm watches are posted from the Northern Jersey Shore to Islip, Long Island, with hurricane watches posted for the South and Central Jersey Shore and Eastern Long Island.

Thursday afternoon: Officials close local beaches as six to 10-foot waves begin to batter the coast. (This is also the time when surfers and TV crews turn out in force.)

Friday morning: Tropical storm-force winds begin to pummel the South Jersey Shore.

Friday afternoon: Conditions rapidly deteriorate in South Jersey while heavy winds and rain enter the New York metro area. (Those who hold tickets to Friday’s U.S. Open matches, consider yourself warned.)

Friday night: Residents will see the worst conditions as Hurricane Earl makes its closest approach. That means gusts up to 80 mph on the Jersey Shore and Eastern Long Island, with gusts up to 100 mph at Montauk Point. The city could see gusts to up 40mph, higher in the top floors of Midtown skyscrapers.

Saturday morning: Winds and seas return to normal as Earl’s winds shift to northerly and northwesterly directions. Rainfall totals in the tri-state could reach six inches or higher.

Ouch. But it’s not as bad as it could be. Holthaus links to a piece from 2005 by “New York Press“writer Aaron Naparstek detailing what would happen if “The Big One” came to town. From the looks of it, Earl would be a leisurely, daytime walk in Prospect Park compared to this fictional monster. In Naparstek’s story, Manhattan and the surrounding boroughs are retuned, piece by piece, to the rivers and oceans from which they came. Sounds like a gay old time!

He writes:

If a storm like the Long Island Express makes a direct hit on the city, everything below Broome Street will be inundated, some parts under as much as 20 and 30 feet of water. Chelsea and Greenwich Village are completely flooded, with the Hudson spilling over all the way to 7th Avenue. Likewise, the East River and East Village become one, with ocean water surging all the way to 1st Avenue. If you haven’t evacuated before the storm, forget it. During the storm, Manhattan’s east- and west-side highways vanish. Tunnels and bridges become unusable.

Oh, Brooklyn, The Bronx and Queens don’t you worry, you’re joining the party as well.

The outer boroughs also get hit hard. Opposed to that new Ikea being built on the waterfront in Red Hook? Don’t worry. There’s a decent chance it won’t be there after a moderate-size hurricane. Residents of Williamsburg-Greenpoint should seek out a male and female of each species and get in their arks. In a kind of one-two-punch effect, a major hurricane will push ocean water down from the Long Island Sound into the Upper East Side, South Bronx and northern Queens, flooding those areas severely. Vast stretches of southern Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island will be devastated. The map shows Atlantic Ocean storm surge reaching as far inland as Flatbush, just south of Prospect Park, with 31.3 feet of water atop Howard Beach.

Now, I’m going to go home and pack my Armageddon survival kit just in case.