WTF?!?! Tornado ... in Brooklyn?!?! Apparently one didn't touch down, just had strong tornado like winds. Look at the twitpics:
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Per NY Times:
The New York City area was battered Thursday afternoon by a brief but violent storm that snarled commuter rail services, cut off electricity to thousands of homes and left at least one person dead when a tree fell on her vehicle during the chaotic evening commute.
A tree fell down during the storm at Sterling Place in Brooklyn.
The storm and its aftereffects bore many of the hallmarks of a tornado, with the tops of trees sheared off and fixtures pulled off roofs, but National Weather Service officials were still analyzing the data to determine whether it should be classified as such.
The fast-moving storm, which had initial wind estimates of 60 to 80 miles per hour, uprooted hundreds of trees in parts of Staten Island, Brooklyn and Queens, and there were numerous reports of small fires, power failures and damage to homes, stores and vehicles.
Robert Holden, President of the Juniper Park Civic Association, a neighborhood group in Middle Village, Queens, described widespread damage after surveying the neighborhood on foot Thursday evening.
“It almost brought me to tears,” he said. “Every block, 2, 3 trees are down into houses, smashed into cars. There’s gridlock. There’s debris everywhere.”
The winds ripped some trees out of the sidewalk and blew them 30 to 40 feet, he said, knocking out electricity as they landed on power lines.
“It wasn’t the rain but there was tremendous wind,” he said. “It didn’t last very long. A few minutes it seemed like.”
Consolidated Edison reported just before 8 pm that more than 25,000 customers were without power in Queens Thursday evening, and more than 5,000 customers experienced outages in Staten Island. Partial building collapses were reported in Queens on Roosevelt Avenue and on Yellowstone Boulevard, and in Brooklyn on Hamilton Avenue and on Fourth Avenue.
Bus and car traffic was reported at a standstill through much of the hardest hit areas.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg surveyed damage at 111 Street and 52 nd Avenue in Queens before a planned event at the Queens Botanical Gardens. He said utility crews were working to restore power for more than 20,000 customers experiencing outages by morning, and that while there may have been some damage to school buildings, he expected all schools to be open on Friday.
"While it may be an act of god, doesn’t make it any easier for us," Mayor Bloomberg said. "The good news is that most people were safe, just annoyed, with traffic being bad, or a tree coming down in their yard."
Fallen trees disrupted Long Island Railroad service in and out of the city, causing officials to close down Penn Station because of overcrowding. Commuters whose trains home were canceled flooded into nearby subway stations to try to catch alternate ways of getting to Long Island and Queens.
Sal Arena, an MTA spokesman, said that "we are asking everyone to sit tight if they’re in Manhattan looking to go home." He said that in addition to Penn Station, Jamaica Station was also at risk of overcrowding if passengers tried to take the subway there for east-bound service. He added that trees were down in Bayside, and had also disrupted service on the Port Washington line. Another MTA spokesperson confirmed that service remained suspend on the 7 train in both directions.
On 7th Avenue near West 34th street, dozens of people waited in a taxi line that began outside of the entrance to Madison Square Garden and extended into the intersection of West 33rd. Opposite of Madison Square Garden, outside of the Hotel Pennsylvania, a smaller group of people stood attempting to hail taxis while police officer shouted at livery cars and gypsy cabs that attempted to pick people up — instructing them to keep moving.
Service disruptions were also reported by the MTA on the city’s subways, with the No. 7 train out of service.
At least one woman was killed when a tree fell on a vehicle about 6:50 p.m. on Grand Central Parkway in the vicinity of Jewell Avenue in Queens. Police said the woman had pulled her car to the side of the parkway, possibly to avoid the storm – though that was still being investigated.
Nonetheless, the car is on the shoulder of the eastbound Grand Central Parkway, and the tree was on top of the car. It was still on top of the car at 8:45 p.m., the police said.
The police could not immediately provide a name or age of the victim or say the make and model of her car. Nor could they say where she was going to or headed from.
They said they believed she was alone, but that it was not entirely clear due to the tree being on the car.
In Brooklyn, there were reports of trees falling on houses and a chimney collapse in Park Slope. heavy damage across Park Slope.
There were also reports of trees falling on houses and a chimney collapse because of the storm in Park Slope, Brooklyn. “All the tops of the trees were shorn off,” said Georgia Davidson, a resident of First Street in Park Slope in Brooklyn, “It looks like a tornado.”
The storm seemed to hurtle down 5th avenue in the neighborhood, hauling live lumber and trash cans along for the ride and leaving a path of destruction in its wake. Chrystal Prather, 32, a graphic novelist, was in a café on Fifth near 3rd Street when she saw the storm coming. She ducked into the doorway of a café. "The wind was so hard it was blowing the door back and forth," said Ms. Prather, 32. "We tried to leave but the winds pushed us back." She watched chunks of tree and plates from an antique store fly by like something from a movie.
Further north at Fifth and Baltic, where side streets were blocked by fallen trees, provisional work crews sprang to move trees and lift sheets of screw-studded plywood construction fence. Eve Cantler, a high school junior, led one. "I knew this was nothing compared to Katrina," said Eve, 16, "but this is like the Park Slope mini-version. I thought I should do what I could to help out.”
Monday, September 20, 2010 at 11:42PM
