In July 2025, footage allegedly showing flooding in a New York City subway station circulated online. One post (archived) received more than 10.8 million views, as of this writing. The footage captured subway passengers before panning to the station outside the train, where water was flooding from a "geyser" in the floor of the station.
@hellolightfoot Flood ! 28th street nyc. 1 train. Who wants to go swimming ? #nycweather #nycmta #subwaycreatures #subwaytakes #subwaystation #nyctransit #ny1 ♬ Welcome To New York (Taylor's Version) - Taylor Swift
The footage also spread to other platforms, including X (archived), where it received tens of thousands of views.
The footage is authentic; people filmed and posted footage of the same station flooding from multiple angles, and The New York Times interviewed someone who was present at the site of the flooding at the 28th Street subway station. The footage contains no indication of AI-generation or alteration.
The TikTok user who posted the video above, @hellolightfoot, listed the name "Jessica Louise Dye" in their account bio and posted two other videos — in addition to the one featured above — of the station flooding. A story (archived) by the Times on July 15, 2025, included the account of someone by the same name. The story began:
Jessica Louise Dye, a New York City musician, thought the packed subway car she was riding uptown through Manhattan on Monday had ground to a halt because of the usual rush hour delays.Then Ms. Dye, 39, heard the gasps. She looked out the window saw water cascading down the stairs from a station entrance at 28th Street and Seventh Avenue. In front of a turnstile, a murky torrent was spewing like a geyser.
The image of the station featured in the Times' story contains visual matches to the circulated video: For example, the locked blue box with caution tape (or similar) on it, the tiled white wall behind the box, and the box's relational distance to the "geyser," which was visibly gushing water in the video.
A video taken early in the flooding of the station featured in a story from New York news outlet WPIX (archived) shows water already pouring out of the hole in the ground, which at that point still visibly had the metal cover over it.
A story from the New York Post (archived) featured an image of a transit employee cleaning the 28th Street station after the water largely drained out.
The videos of that subway station stemmed from regional flash flooding on July 14, 2025, which has killed two people in New Jersey, as of this writing.