Nor'easter batters northeast US with flooding, outages and flight chaos

A powerful nor’easter battered the northeastern United States on Saturday, knocking out power to more than 88,000 homes and businesses and forcing airlines to cancel more than 400 flights.

As of Saturday afternoon local time, more than 88,000 homes and businesses remained without power across New Jersey, Connecticut, New York and Pennsylvania, according to power outage tracker PowerOutage.com, down from a high of more than 119,000 earlier in the day. Flight tracker FlightAware recorded about 425 flights cancelled and 1,338 delayed on Saturday. (https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/noreaster-leaves-over-100000-customers-without-power-us-northeast-over-400-2026-09-26/)

The governors of New York and New Jersey declared states of emergency on Friday in counties expected to see the worst of the storm, including New York City. Bob Oravec, lead forecaster with the National Weather Service in College Park, Maryland, said the storm was likely to persist with “a lot of high winds, a lot of high tides and heavy rain possibility over the next few days”, adding that nor’easters are not unusual in autumn but that “this might be a little earlier than average for a big storm”. (https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/9/26/powerful-storm-brings-flooding-power-outages-to-northeastern-united-states)

“Anyone who goes in or near the water this weekend is literally gambling with their life,” New York Governor Kathy Hochul said.

Despite the warnings, people were seen kayaking down flooded streets in Long Island, New York, while others took advantage of large swells in Hampton, New Hampshire. “In all the canals, the water is up really high and coming into people’s back yards,” Ocean City, Maryland resident Jay Boyd told The Associated Press.

Concerts and sporting events were also cancelled, including Ed Sheeran’s scheduled shows in Massachusetts on Friday and Saturday.