Times Union5%
Upstate New York grapples with damage left in wake of historic downpour 4%
By Jesse Taylor2% Roger Hannigan Gilson5% Mike Goodwin2% H.R. Schneider2%
7/30/2026, 2:41:12 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 15 faulty reasoning types, including Hasty Generalization, Overconfidence Bias, and Pessimism Bias, with Confirmation Bias as the most egregious example at 7% saturation with 61 hits. Analysis detected 474 faulty-reasoning hits from 875 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 16.7% and a BS Rank of 4% (21,457 of 22,231 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 96.50% of the article peer group.
After a historic storm moved through the region on Wednesday, firefighters in Castleton-on-Hudson spent much of the following day in basements to clear water from homes flooded on Main Street.
But first responders encountered a problem: Basements that had already been pumped out were again refilling with water.
The rainfall had caused groundwater levels to rise in the area.
“If the groundwater keeps coming up like it is, they’re going to have to wait until the groundwater goes down,” Assistant Fire Chief Chris Carner said.
The firefighters in the Rensselaer County village were among many across upstate New York working to assess and repair the damage left in the wake of the storm — which led to evacuations, road destruction and several floods — as meteorologists warned of more heavy rainfall on the way early next week.
The downpour was unlike anything seen in the region since Tropical Storm Irene hit in 2011.
Real-time updates: Weather across upstate | Extreme weather risks | Power outages across New York | How much rain did we get?
Greene County Executive Shaun Groden suggested, however, that New York as a whole likely did not sustain enough damage for the Federal Emergency Management Agency to declare a disaster, which would open up federal funds for repairs.
States and counties qualify for FEMA disaster declarations based on the cost of damages.
The threshold for a state is $1.94 per capita and $4.86 per capita for counties, according to FEMA, making the threshold for New York about $37 million and the threshold for Greene County about $230,000.
Damage was still being assessed, and Groden requested towns and villages submit damage assessments of their property, but the county executive said the dollar amount would not be high enough for Greene County.
“We’re not going to be declared a disaster area,” he said.
“We know that.”
Schodack, in southern Rensselaer County, was one of the towns most impacted.
Schodack accumulated 11.8 inches of rain, according to June Wang, director of the New York State Mesonet at the University at Albany.
Though he doesn’t have an exact estimate, town Supervisor Charles Peter said Schodack is likely facing costs of more than $100,000 to repair town property and local roads damaged by floodwater.
He said the epicenter of the storm’s damage in the town was the intersection of Muitzeskill and River roads, near the Schodack Island State Park entrance.
Rensselaer County Executive Steve McLaughlin said other areas, such as North Greenbush, Rensselaer and Schaghticoke, were impacted by the storm as well, but the rainfall in Schodack “seemed like the worst of it.”
McLaughlin said he expected to tour the county with the state Office of Emergency Management to further assess the storm’s damage Thursday afternoon.
When asked if he expects to receive state assistance in dealing with the storm’s aftermath, McLaughlin said it’s too early to tell.
The storm sat over the region for an extended period of time, Wang said, feeding off moisture from warm ocean water.
Other parts of the region experienced significantly less rain, such as Stephentown, which recorded 4.2 inches of rain.
Wang said rain totals depended on the position of the storm system.
The torrential rain is an example of how climate change and rising temperatures have long been predicted to cause more frequent and intense extreme weather events, she said.
As temperatures rise, water vapor in the atmosphere increases, leading to more precipitation, she added.
Albany experienced its second-wettest calendar day on record Wednesday, with a total of 5.45 inches of rain reported from Albany International Airport in Colonie, according to National Weather Service Meteorologist Joe Villani.
Including rain on Tuesday, Albany was drenched with 7 inches.
Kinderhook joined Schodack in breaking records for the most 24-hour precipitation, accumulating about 11.5 inches of rain, Wang said.
The storm also knocked out power to thousands.
National Grid reported about 1,500 customers without power on Thursday morning, with the largest clusters in southern Rensselaer County, Bethlehem and parts of southern Albany County.
By that afternoon, power had been restored to most.
In Columbia County’s Germantown, rushing floodwaters during the storm tore up a portion of Main Street.
Town Supervisor David Helsley said Thursday that repairs on the road would take two to three months and cost $5 million.
The street is owned by the county, which is in charge of repairing it, according to Helsley.
Several roads in the town were also damaged, including Hunterstown Road, which would require “pretty extensive repairs,” Helsley said.
He estimated those roads would cost between $150,000 and $200,000 to fix.
Town of Greenport residents were warned Thursday morning to expect shutoffs and discolored water caused by a water main break.
KS Fitness and Performance, a gym in the town, was closed “for the foreseeable future” after losing its water supply.
The region has a few days of dryness to recover from the torrential downpour, but heavy rain from another storm system expected to land Sunday into Monday could be enough to cause even more flooding on grounds already saturated with water, Villani said.
“The grounds are already saturated,” Villani said.
“They can’t hold too much water.”
Nora Mishanec contributed reporting to this story.
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