At least 17 dead as Hurricane Ida rips through New York flooding basements

"It was like living in the jungle, like tropical rain. Unbelievable. Everything is so strange this year," he told AFP.

Hundreds of flights were cancelled at LaGuardia and JFK airports, as well as at Newark, where video showed a terminal inundated by rainwater.

"We're all in this together. The nation is ready to help," President Joe Biden said ahead of a trip Friday to the southern state of Louisiana, where Ida earlier destroyed buildings and left more than a million homes without power.

I want to express my heartfelt thanks to all the first responders and everyone working through the night to save lives and get the power back on following last night’s storms. @FEMA is on the ground and ready to provide all the assistance that’s needed.

Flooding closed major roads across multiple New York boroughs including Manhattan, The Bronx and Queens, submerging cars and forcing the fire department to rescue hundreds of people.

Nine died in New York City, including eight who could not escape their basements, police said. The victims ranged from the ages of two to 86.

"Among the people most at risk during flash floods here are those living in off-the-books basement dwellings that don't meet the safety codes necessary to save lives," lawmaker Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted.

"These are working class, immigrant, and low-income people & families," she added.

How the climate crisis is an inequality crisis:

Many of these deaths occurred in basement dwellings, many of which are illegal and growing in # due to the unaffordable housing crisis, but do not meet safety standards required to keep people safe in incidents like flash floods. https://t.co/6ImAWXEvEj

Another four people lost their lives in Elizabeth, New Jersey, a spokesperson for the mayor there told AFP, while another death was confirmed in Passaic.

Three died in Montgomery County outside Philadelphia in Pennsylvania, a local official confirmed. Ida blazed a trail of destruction north after slamming into Louisiana over the weekend, bringing severe flooding and tornadoes.

"We're enduring an historic weather event tonight with record-breaking rain across the city, brutal flooding and dangerous conditions on our roads," New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said late on Wednesday.

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State emergencies were declared in New York and New Jersey while the National Weather Service issued its first-ever emergency flash flood warning for New York City, urging residents to move to higher ground.

"You do not know how deep the water is and it is too dangerous," the New York branch of the National Weather Service (NWS) said in a tweet.

The NWS recorded 80 millimetres of rain in Central Park in just an hour - beating a record set just last month during Storm Henri.

The US Open was also halted as howling wind and rain blew under the corners of the Louis Armstrong Stadium roof.

Danny Hong shows where the water reached up to him in his apartment in New York, Sept. 2, 2021, in New York. .(AP Photo/Mary Altaffer) Source: AP

Lingering tornado threat

New Yorkers woke to clear blue skies Thursday as the city edged back to life but signs of the previous night's carnage weren't far away: residents moved fallen tree branches from roads as subway services slowly resumed.

Around 98,000 homes in Pennsylvania, 60,000 in New Jersey and 40,000 in New York were without power, according to the website poweroutage.us.

It is rare for such storms to strike America's northeastern seaboard and comes as the surface layer of oceans warms due to climate change.

The warming is causing cyclones to become more powerful and carry more water, posing an increasing threat to the world's coastal communities, scientists say.

"Global warming is upon us and it's going to get worse and worse and worse unless we do something about it," said Democratic senator Chuck Schumer.

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In Annapolis,  50 kilometres from Washington, a tornado ripped up trees and toppled electricity poles.

The NWS warned the threat of tornadoes would linger, with tornado watches in effect for parts of southern Connecticut, northern New Jersey, and southern New York as Ida tracked north through New England Thursday.

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