Did 'Warning Fatigue' Set In As Hurricane Remnants Neared The Northeast?

As Ida approached New York and New Jersey, some people may have been so inundated with weather alerts that they stopped taking them seriously.

NEW YORK (AP) — Cellphones across New York and New Jersey pulsed with urgent warnings of catastrophic flooding as the fury of Hurricane Ida’s remnants, carrying torrential rains, approached upper New Jersey and New York City on Wednesday. The first alerts of severe weather blared across millions of phones at 8:41 p.m. that night when the National Weather Service warned of dangerous flash flooding from the looming storm. Officials would issue three more alerts, late into the night, urging people to immediately head for higher ground and to stay out of rising floodwaters. A barrage of other alerts from a litany of apps lit up phone screens throughout the night — prompting some to wonder if people were just too inundated with information to take the threat seriously.