NYC dries out from storm that also caused significant wind damage

NEW YORK (PIX11) -- In New York City's five boroughs, hours upon hours of rain overnight on Sunday and into the day on Monday, coupled with winds gusting as high as a car can travel on an interstate, resulted in some damage. Parts of Queens were among the worst hit by the storm.

As Michael Lao, the owner of a home on 41st Avenue and 169th Street in Murray Hill, Queens, said, the tree in front of his home succumbed to the combination of rain inundation and high winds. 

"It fell about 5:15, I think," he said about the early morning incident, "and hit the house."

His house. Its aluminum siding showed signs of damage where the tree had landed, near his front door, but nobody was hurt. 

The same was the case a block-and-a-half away near 170th Street. That's where an even larger tree got blown over by the intense winds. It damaged parts of the home, and blocked its front door.

While those two big trees -- as well branches and twigs from thousands of other trees that fell all over the city -- were evidence of the damage that soaked soil combined high winds can bring, a two-story tall metal flagpole in the same neighborhood as the two trees was severed one-tenth of the way up from the ground. 

It was a clear indication that there were not only high wind gusts, but there were intense sustained winds, as well.  

Rick Maslo talked about how he'd experienced it in his neighborhood of Whitestone, Queens, overnight. 

"You could feel it," he said. "Everything was shaking."

One of his neighbors, who declined to give her name, said that the forceful wind had kept her awake all night in her bedroom. 

"The door I usually keep closed," she said, "it opened by itself, and the house was all shaking. It was unbelievable. I never experienced anything like that."

Her and Maslo's section of Whitestone had flooded so badly during a rainstorm last year, that this time people put up flood protection barriers in front of their homes.

The guards apparently weren't needed this go round, however, despite nearly a month's worth of rain having fallen in less than a day in the neighborhood. 

Gina Lombardo, another resident, lives right in front of a rain garden. It's one of some 13,000 drainage control units around the five boroughs that can absorb up to 2,500 gallons of stormwater, and slowly put it back into the ground. 

"It seemed it worked, for sure," said Lombardo.