On Wed, 8 Aug 2007, Doug Henwood wrote:
> I've been here 28 years and I don't remember one time when a huge
> rainstorm shut down most of the subway.
You forget the last nor'easter, in December 1992. Same deal except that the entire system was shut down in the evening after rush hour was over. I think in absolute terms, that one was worse (in amount of water dropped, property destroyed and in the hang-over to the system -- it was still bad the next day), but what made this one the worst ever was the timing: it peaked just before the morning rush hour.
Classical nor'easters are weird reverse hurricanes that form off Maine and then come south. They don't come this far very often, but it's been happening every few decades for a long time.
But FWIW, this doesn't seem to have formed like a normal nor'easter at all. It didn't form in the winter, it didn't come south from Maine, and it seems to have cut a swath of weird extreme weather events across the country before it got here (including snow in Texas in August). So maybe it was a climate event.
Michael