Flooding, Hundreds of Canceled Flights and Nearly 100,000 Homes Without Power: The Toll of the Storm Battering New York, New Jersey and New England

A 56-year-old man died Saturday in Brooklyn, New York, after a tree fell on him near Euclid Avenue. He was taken in critical condition to Brookdale Hospital, where he was pronounced dead shortly after 5 p.m. The New York City Housing Authority confirmed that he was one of its own employees. This is, so far, the only confirmed death linked to the powerful storm system that has been battering the East Coast since Friday.

However, the damage is already extensive. Nearly 100,000 customers were without power in the Northeast on Saturday, according to figures from PowerOutage.us, with New Jersey, Connecticut, and Long Island among the hardest-hit areas. More than 400 flights were canceled nationwide, most of them from Logan Airport in Boston, along with the vast majority of flights to Martha's Vineyard and Nantucket. Tens of millions of people, from Virginia to New Jersey, were placed under a coastal flood warning, and both New York Governor Kathy Hochul and New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill declared a state of emergency.

What worries meteorologists most is how high the water rose. Along the Jersey Shore and in New York Harbor, the tide exceeded its normal high-water level by more than 3 feet, according to preliminary data from NOAA. In Sea Bright, a small coastal town in New Jersey, Mayor Brian Kelly said some streets could be flooded up to 6 feet deep. "It's going to be worse than average. We do have probably one or two flooding events a year, sometimes more, sometimes less, but I think this one will be closer to an Irene-scale flooding event," he said, referring to the 2011 hurricane that wreaked havoc in the region. "I hope I'm wrong, but that's my gut feeling."

In Surf City, another coastal town in New Jersey, water poured directly into buildings—something that, according to residents, hadn't happened since Sandy. Kenny Formica, who owns a marina in the area, spent Saturday watching security cameras as water rose inside his own business. He said he woke up to messages from customers who had lost boats and jet skis, including a video from 4 a.m. showing a 25-foot boat torn from its lift by the wind. "This is like an 8,000-pound boat and, you know, a $150,000 boat — just gone," he said.

The strongest gusts recorded so far reached 74 mph in Surf City and 70 mph in both Wellfleet, Massachusetts, and in Barnegat Light, New Jersey. On Cape Cod, Martha's Vineyard, and Nantucket, winds remained between 60 and 65 mph, while in Boston they hovered between 50 and 55 mph. Matthew Belk, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Massachusetts, explained that the storm season in the Northeast is just beginning, but that this storm arrived at a bad time: the trees still have leaves, which creates more wind resistance and increases the risk of branches falling onto power lines and streets.

The chaos even disrupted the weekend's sports and cultural events. The Boston Red Sox and the Chicago Cubs, both with their sights set on the playoffs, had to play a doubleheader on Friday to get ahead of the storm, and the MLB ended up relocating the series-closing game to Florida, at the Tampa Bay Rays' stadium. Ed Sheeran, for his part, canceled his two shows scheduled for the weekend at Gillette Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts. Further south, the closure of a highway on Hatteras Island in North Carolina, left nearly all the guests at a wedding stranded on the other side of the roadblock; a local campground ended up offering the couple a new venue for the ceremony.

The slow-moving storm system is expected to remain close to the New Jersey coast before gradually shifting northeast, prolonging the risk of flooding and power outages at least through Monday. "The rain is underway and while it's only half an inch or so thus far, mark my words: Much more is coming," Hochul warned on Saturday morning.