Absolutely soaked: Henri dumps record-setting rainfall across New York City

New York City avoided the worst of Tropical Storm Henri — but the big rainmaker seriously saturated the Five Boroughs along the way.

Central Park saw 7.16 inches of rainfall associated with Henri through early Monday morning, according to the National Weather Service. A record 1.91 inches of rain fell at the park in just one hour’s time between 10 and 11 p.m. on Saturday night, Aug. 21 — bringing a premature end to the We Love NYC Concert in the process.

Brooklyn got the most rainfall of any borough, with an astounding 7.86 inches of rain recorded at Prospect Park as of 4 a.m. Aug. 23. The Bronx saw 5.35 inches of rain as of Sunday night, and Howard Beach, Queens recorded 5.95 inches as of Sunday afternoon. The College of Staten Island reported 4.15 inches of rain as of 4:05 a.m. Aug. 23.

The heavy rain prompted some flash flooding in spots across the city, but not to the level city officials feared before Henri’s arrival Sunday, according to Mayor Bill de Blasio. Damage was minimal, with just a few scattered power outages and about 65 fallen trees reported.

“The good news is we avoided the worst in a big way,” de Blasio said at his Monday press briefing. “It turned out much better than we feared.”

Henri has been dumping his rain across the New York City area since Saturday night. The downgraded hurricane made landfall in Westerly, Rhode Island nearly 24 hours ago as a tropical storm; it has since been reduced to a tropical depression.

Despite some reported flooding in subway tunnels on Saturday night, mass transit in New York City was also largely spared, according to acting MTA Chair and CEO Janno Lieber.

“And the partial shutdowns we had of the two commuter railroads, Long Island Rail Road east of Ronkonkoma and Patchogue, and on Metro-North — we shut down yesterday the New Haven line — but both of those lines are back in action, and the entire system is functioning normally, which is great,” Lieber said during an interview with Fox 5’s “Good Day New York” on Monday. “A real testament to the work that the MTA workforce — the extra thousands of people who came back to work yesterday. The work they did clearly paid off.”

New Yorkers can expect to see showers and the occasional thunderstorm continue throughout the day Monday as Henri finally clears out of the northeast U.S. The skies should brighten in a big way Tuesday, along with summer heat; the National Weather Service forecast for Aug. 24 calls for plenty of sunshine and a high of 85º.