Tornado in Brooklyn

While Christchurch is still having earthquakes, here in Brooklyn we had our very own tornado (or super-severe storm — the weather service isn’t sure which). The winds and rain whipped up all of a sudden, picked up huge branches and even trees and threw them across the streets, and then twenty minutes later it was dead calm again.

Thankfully, I left work just after the tornado stopped. At the time, I had no idea it was more than a heavy wind — in Manhattan where I work we just had some strong winds and hard rain. Then I got out of the subway station in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn, and wondered if some city contractors had been through to trim all the trees, and done a really bad job cleaning up. That’s what it looked like at first — there were leaves, branches, and whole trees (we’re talking half a metre in diameter!) strewn across the footpath and street. But on closer inspection, they hadn’t been cut by chain saws. The divine hand doesn’t cut neatly.

For example, here’s the kind of thing many people came home to in Park Slope (just a few blocks away from us):

You can see more pictures from our area here. And there’s some video footage and a news article with more information here.

Anyway, we’re all safe and sound, don’t worry. And thankfully the car we’re borrowing was away from trees and untouched.

Franci recorded a weird (and funny!) video of what was happening to our toilet during the tornado. You can watch that on our Flickr page here.

And here are a few more photos that I took outside our apartment: