We don’t think about these things being related: global warming and mass transit? the mortgage meltdown and disease? But look:
We had three and a half inches of rain in an hour in New York City very early this morning -- that’s basically a month’s worth of rainfall in sixty minutes. (A warmer atmosphere is a wetter atmosphere, remember.) That much rain falling that fast doesn’t have much of anywhere to go, except down to the lowest level it can find. In NYC, that’s the subway. Just in time for the morning rush, every single subway line was flooded and out of service in Manhattan, where the trains are underground; some sections of some lines in the outer boroughs are elevated, but they can’t run if there’s nowhere for them to go. We’ve had weather-related subway problems before -- most typically with extreme cold and ice -- but I cannot recall another instance in which every subway line was impacted. It was so bad that the city was telling people just to stay home, or at least to delay their morning commute.
