Governor Kathy Hochul on Aug 8th, cautioned New Yorkers as parts of the state are forecasted to be impacted by the remnants of Debby with heavy rain and potential river and flash flooding. Starting around midday Friday, Debby is expected to merge with another storm system, producing between 2–4 inches of rainfall with locally heavier amounts of 3–5 inches for parts of the North Country, Central NY, Finger Lakes, Mohawk Valley, Capital, Mid-Hudson, and Southern Tier regions. The heaviest rain is forecast to begin Friday afternoon and continue into the evening, and the heaviest rainfall totals are expected in parts of the southern Adirondacks, the eastern Catskills, and Central New York. Heavy rain may cause flooding of urban or poor-drainage areas, as well as flash floods and river flooding. For the New York City, Long Island, and lower Mid-Hudson regions, there is the potential for isolated severe storms with damaging winds gusts and brief tornadoes, ahead of the cold front beginning Friday afternoon through Friday night. Wind gusts up to 35 to 45 mph are possible along the coast, which could result in tree damage and power outages. Governor Hochul urged New Yorkers to monitor the storm’s track as a shift in its direction could cause impacts in different locations of the state.

VIDEO of the event is available on YouTube here and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format here.

AUDIO of the Governor's remarks is available.

PHOTOS of the event will be available on the Governor's Flickr page.

A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:

?Before we get started, I have to talk about a topic that is not new to us here in New York, and that is extreme weather. I wanted to give everybody an update. We have, as you noticed, we had an unexpected, literally unexpected tornado in Buffalo that tore the roof off a senior facility. We had heavy flooding and major travel disruptions in the New York City area, especially in the Bronx. And now that was just a teaser for what's coming.

I don't want to be a Debbie Downer, but the forecast shows us that Tropical Storm Debby is about to lead to massive downfalls of rainfall all over the State of New York. We're expecting that starting tonight, significant rainfall that'll lead to flash flooding – it begins tonight and intensifies Friday, continues into Saturday. We expect up to six inches of rain in some parts of our state – that'll mean two inches per hour, which is fairly cataclysmic.

Mostly it is focused on upstate, not the downstate area with the higher populations, which is good news. There will be some rainfall. But from I-81 in the west to I-87 and between Pennsylvania and Canada. It's a large area. But we have to be prepared for this. The weather has changed so radically, unexpectedly, at the last minute, and we pay very close attention to the forecasters, but we've had some seriously extreme events – Rome in July, Fulton County just a couple days ago.

So to prepare, we need to protect New Yorkers. I've activated 100 National Guard to be ready to be deployed where necessary. Once again, we have to open our emergency operations center. Utility operators – this is what happens with the heavy winds, the rainfall, many times limbs snap the power lines, resulting in power outages. We have over 5,500 utility personnel, ready to be deployed again. Because we don't have specificity on exactly what part of the state is going to be hit and when – we're trying to monitor this as closely as possible. We have to be as prepared as we can be, ready to send out the reinforcements as necessary.

We have state agencies pre-positioning swift water rescue teams because we've seen with some massive flooding events, not the least of which was a thousand year flooding event just last year, the year before. We have to be ready to rescue people. And also to be really on top of this, we're releasing some water from some of the reservoirs already – the Hudson River Basin from the Stillwater Reservoir and the Black River Basin as well. We're also in the canal system, lifting movable dams from Rotterdam to Fort Plain to manage the volume of water in the Mohawk River. So this will close it off to ships and boats for the duration of the storm.

Also communicating intensely with local emergency management teams, the county executives, the county administrators as well. So, this seems obvious, but we're calling on everyone to really monitor the weather in your area. Watch for those cell phone messages that can go off. The National Weather Service will alert people as to the extreme weather that's happening.

And flash flooding – more lives are lost during a storm event because of flash flooding – people in vehicles that are swept away. And I've said so many times, it does not take much rain to literally turn your vehicle into a boat floating down a river, sometimes at rapid rates. So make sure you're ready if you're in a flood prone area, stay out of your vehicles if you can, that's my best advice, during the intense periods. Have your to-go bags ready, have an evacuation plan. And again, we want to make sure that we stay closely attune to the weather forecast. Be ready to go to safety if necessary.