The morning after the deadliest storm since Hurricane Sandy in 2012, the sun was shining again in New York.
And for many people in town it was still difficult to grasp what had happened the night before.
Mayor Bill de Blasio admitted that he completely underestimated the force of the tail of Hurricane Ida.
Weather forecasts by experts would have turned out to be a mockery within minutes.
Recently incumbent Governor Kathy Hochul said, "Little did we know that the locks of heaven were literally opening and how Niagara Falls would bring water to the streets of New York." The city must be better prepared from now on.
Roland Lindner
Business correspondent in New York.
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Ida took New York and neighboring regions by surprise.
Three days after the storm hit the American mainland as a hurricane in the southern state of Louisiana, it arrived in the northeast of the country, weaker but more deadly.
At least 45 fatalities have been counted so far, in Louisiana there are twelve.
13 people have died in New York alone, most of them in flooded basement apartments in the boroughs of Queens and Brooklyn.
It is speculated that these are apartments without adequate escape routes and other safety standards that are prevalent in New York and that are often home to immigrants.
At least 23 people died in neighboring New Jersey.
Governor Phil Murphy said most of them were swept away by the floods in their cars.
Weather services had warned
New York has never seen rain of this intensity. Within a single hour on Wednesday evening, 80 millimeters of rain fell in Central Park. That was by far a new record, the previous high was only set a few weeks ago when the tropical storm Henri brought 50 millimeters. Even if the local politicians were surprised, the storm did not come from nowhere. Weather services had already warned on Tuesday that there could be a significant risk of flooding. Unlike Hurricane Sandy back then, there were no evacuation instructions this time.
The situation quickly came to a head on Wednesday evening.
For the first time ever, the National Meteorological Service declared the city a flash flood emergency, and New Yorkers received repeated alerts describing the storm as a "serious threat to human life."
The rain built up on the streets and turned buses into amphibious vehicles, and masses of water fell into subway stations.
Subway trains were stuck, passengers had to be freed from more than a dozen stranded trains.
"The New York subway system is not a submarine," said Janno Lieber, head of the MTA, the television station CNN.
US Open tournament canceled, cafes flooded
At the US Open tennis tournament in Queens, a game in a stadium that was actually roofed had to be abandoned because it was pouring in from the side and raining. Spectators were stuck because the subway no longer ran and streets around the tennis facility were closed. The German tennis player Angelique Kerber, who was supposed to be in action on Wednesday evening, had to spend the night in the gym of the Arthur Ashe Stadium, as she wrote on Instagram.
Several restaurants in the city were flooded.
The water at Yafa Café in Brooklyn was knee-high, the operators said it would probably be closed for some time, and they set up a donation page on the online platform GoFundMe.
However, food delivery services apparently remained available.
A video spread on Twitter of a man pushing his bike and a bag that apparently contained a meal order through masses of water in Brooklyn.
The storm passed quickly, but the consequences could still be seen everywhere on Thursday in bright sunshine.
A ballpark in New Jersey was still under water.
Broken down cars without drivers could be seen on many streets, 500 vehicles were towed away in New York alone.
Storms of this kind "no coincidence"
Eric Adams, the Democratic Party's candidate for November mayoral election and likely successor to Bill de Blasio, said he had never seen a storm like this. Usually after heavy rains there are only floods in areas that are close to the water, but this time it has also hit completely different districts. Many politicians linked the storm with climate change. “The sudden brutality of these storms is no accident,” said de Blasio.
Governor Hochul said that if there were two record rains in such a short period of time, it would suggest that these are now predictable events. American President Joe Biden tweeted that the floods in New York and other recent natural disasters were a reminder that the climate crisis had arrived. Biden wanted to travel to Louisiana on Friday to get an idea of the devastation after the hurricane. More than 850,000 households here still have no electricity.