NEW YORK — The city battened down the hatches ahead of Hurricane Henri’s arrival — a hit feared to be the biggest since Sandy in 2012.
A shift to the west in Henri’s trek up the East Coast on Saturday put Long Island in the crosshairs, and the storm sped up Saturday afternoon.
The National Hurricane Center said hurricane conditions, flooding rainfall and dangerous storm surges could being in parts of the Northeast late Saturday or early Sunday.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo, taking lead on New York’s response effort despite the impending end to his tenure, declared a state of emergency for areas including New York City, the Hudson Valley and the Capitol region. His announcement came hours after Henri strengthened from a tropical storm into a Category 1 hurricane.
“We are in the proverbial calm before the storm and it is misleading toward how serious this situation could be,” Cuomo said. “Sandy was also a Category 1 storm when it hit New York, just to put in perspective how dangerous this could be.”
He said service on some branches of the Long Island Rail Road will be suspended at midnight in eastern Long Island. Cuomo also warned that heavy rains were expected to create problems far up into the Hudson River Valley.
Mayor Bill de Blasio also declared a state of emergency for the city, warning the rain and wind would arrive early in the morning and worsen during the day, advising residents to hunker down.
Con Edison tweeted Saturday it is “closely monitoring” the storm and “preparing for possible damage that could cause outages in our service area.”
The utility company urged people to stay away from downed power lines.
In the late afternoon advisory on Saturday, Henri was about 335 miles south of Montauk Point on Long Island and moving a little faster than before, at 18 mph to the north-northeast. Top sustained winds remained at 75 mph.
A popular summer spot could become a ghost town in the interest of safety.
“I am announcing a voluntary evacuation order to urge residents and visitors of Fire Island to leave for their own safety,” Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone tweeted.
Henri initially appeared poised to make landfall in New England, but the weather system has continued to veer further west than forecasters first predicted. The storm is expected to dump several inches of rain across the Northeast, with impacts extending inland to Hartford, Connecticut, and Albany, as well as eastward to Cape Cod, which is teeming with tens of thousands of summer tourists.
The National Hurricane Center warned a storm surge between 3 feet and 5 feet is possible from Flushing in Queens to Chatham, Massachusetts, as well as for parts of the North Shore and South Shore of Long Island
Rainfall was expected to dump between 3 inches to 6 inches through Monday.
The hurricane, which will also be the first to strike the New England area in 30 years, has recently drawn comparisons to Hurricane Bob, a Category 2 storm that killed at least 17 people in 1991.
Henri has also triggered hurricane warnings from near the old whaling port of New Bedford, Mass., and across the ritzy oceanfront mansions in the Hamptons.
“If you know you are in an area that tends to flood ... get out of that area now, please,” Cuomo said . “If you have to get to higher ground it has to be today.”
