Hurricane Henri Was Mainly a Rainfall Flooding Generator in the Northeast, Including New York City (RECAP)

While initially expected to curl northeast away from the U.S. East Coast, the forecast began to trend toward a New England brush, if not outright landfall, as Henri fell under the influence of a swirl of low pressure tens of thousands of feet above the ground arriving from the Ohio Valley into the mid-Atlantic states.

Henri then became a hurricane on Aug. 21 when it was less than 200 miles east of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina.

After passing north of the warm waters of the Gulf Stream, Henri began weakening and was downgraded to a tropical storm on Aug. 22 before its southern New England landfall.

The center of Henri moved ashore around 12:15 p.m. Aug. 22 in southwest Rhode Island near the town of Westerly, about 40 miles southwest of the state's capital city, Providence.

Maximum sustained winds at landfall were 60 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center.

Wind gusts from 60 to 70 mph were clocked along the coast of Rhode Island around landfall. Great Gull Island off the eastern end of Long Island clocked a 72 mph gust.

Trees and wires were downed in parts of Rhode Island, Connecticut and Massachusetts. Over 100,000 customers lost power in New England, New York and New Jersey, according to poweroutage.us.

Up to 9 inches of rain drenched parts of New Jersey, triggering major flooding in several areas.

In Middlesex County, numerous roads were closed and vehicles submerged. Homes were flooded with 3 feet of water in Cranbury, some residences and businesses were flooded in Milltown, and evacuations were needed in Helmetta.

Heavy rain also triggered flooding in the New York City metro on the night of Aug. 21, including in Brooklyn, Hoboken and Newark. Almost 2 inches of rain fell in one hour from 10 to 11 p.m. at New York's Central Park.

Another band of soaking rain set up over the New York City Tri-State area the following afternoon into the evening, flooding stretches of the Bronx River, Sprain Brook and Taconic State Parkways. Parts of New York City's five boroughs picked up 6 to 10 inches of rain.

In eastern Pennsylvania, basements were flooded in Smithfield Township, vehicles were submerged in Scranton, and flooding shut down a stretch of Interstate 80 between Bartonsville and Tannersville.

The only tornadoes spawned by Henri occurred the day after landfall, a triplet of EF0 twisters in eastern Massachusetts between Worcester and Boston.

Editor's note: The article was edited to remove an NWS claim of a record 1-hour rain rate at New York City's Central Park during Henri. Climatologist Brian Brettschneider found two occurrences of heavier rain rates at Central Park in 1926 and 1905.

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