NEW YORK — Rain and thunder brought a halt to the city’s comeback concert at Central Park on Saturday night.

Music luminaries and thousands of New Yorkers had been partying like it was 2019, hitting a hopeful note late in the second summer of COVID-19, before rain and thunder came in the middle of Barry Manilow’s set.

Organizers were hoping for better weather to resume the show, but it’s unclear if it the show will go on. Bruce Springsteen and Paul Simon were among those yet to take the stage before the show was halted.

The show was meant to herald the return of New York City, even as Hurricane Henri set its sights on the Northeast.

Throngs of vaccinated music fans — some masked, most not — filled into the 55-acre field long before the first act. Concert staff asked for proof of shots at the gates.

Many concertgoers draped beach towels over the grass on a sticky, hot evening in Manhattan. They scouted out spots in the shadow of a stage and light display that screamed “NYC” in imposing lettering.

Brooklyn-raised music mogul Clive Davis booked the show’s star-studded lineup, a list that also included opera tenor Andrea Bocelli, rapper LL Cool J and guitar genius Carlos Santana.

Bocelli, one of the first acts, sang “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” a folk song that became a pandemic anthem, with its optimistic encouragements for the lonely. “We crossed a terrible storm this year,” Bocelli told the crowd.

Not long after, Santana performed a boisterous rendition of “Maria Maria” as New Yorkers swayed.

Also on the bill were Brooklyn-born balladeer Manilow, punk powerhouse Patti Smith and hip-hop star Wyclef Jean.

Davis, 89, said ahead of the concert that the selections were meant to “do justice to the full range of great New York music.”

The event, broadcast on CNN and branded the “Homecoming Concert,” put an exclamation point on a week of concerts across the five boroughs in celebration of New York’s comeback.

The city coordinated the concert along with Davis and Live Nation, an entertainment company. Many tickets were free, though passes were tricky to acquire.

Mayor Bill de Blasio, proud of the city’s rebound from a crisis that in the spring of 2020 turned its streets grim and ghostly, had crowed for weeks about the concert. And he appeared fired up when he took the stage shortly after 7 p.m.

“This is the greatest concert in the history of New York!” de Blasio thundered. “Let’s thank the front-line workers of New York City who brought us back.”

Many celebrities made appearances. Stephen Colbert, host of “The Late Show,” was spotted dancing on the grounds with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who lives in Brooklyn.

Meanwhile, balloons and beach balls bounced above the crowds on the Great Lawn. A palpable sense of joy overcame the ongoing threat posed by the ultra-contagious delta variant. And locals came from far and wide to soak in the celebration.

Al Cartagena, 55, traveled from the Throgs Neck neighborhood in the Bronx to see the concert, which he said was a once-in-a-lifetime moment for him and his wife.

They dished out about $88 apiece for their tickets, he said, and took the subway and the bus to get the park by around 2:30 p.m.

With whipping winds and rain churning up the East Coast, the couple were ready for wet weather, Cartagena said about an hour before the concert began. Henri was expected to make landfall on Long Island on Sunday.

“I’m glad we’re here before the storm,” he said. “We’re ready. We’ve got our ponchos.”

But despite brief moments of pre-concert drizzle, a positive sign from above arrived as the concert revved to rock at 5 p.m. The sun peeked out from behind the clouds, and washed Central Park in golden light.

All looked good — for a while. Then the rains came.