a tornado grows in brooklyn

It seems I picked the perfect time to be out of town. Yesterday a tornado hit south Brooklyn, the first since 1889. Apparently a huge storm passed through the area, and it turned into a small tornado that wrecked the expected damage and havoc in such an urban area. The public transportation system got royally screwed up, and there were reports of subway lines flooding from all the rain.

I have one friend who was at 'ground zero' of the storm. He reported massive winds, and described the scene as something eerie and well ... weird. The sky outside was dark (it was early morning), pieces of trash and scrap metal were getting blown about, and no one was outside on the streets, which is very unusual for Brooklyn.

Anyway, as expected, the news channels out of NYC are having a field day with the story, as are all those urban bloggers who 'survived' the tornado. Photos abound online -- simply type in 'Brooklyn tornado 2007' on google.com and about a dozen sites will pop up with photos. I'm not posting any of the photos from those sites here, because of copyright reasons. (Every photo posted here is either my own photograph I've taken, or borrowed from a royalty/copyright free website for bloggers. I ain't stupid when it comes to property usage rights!)

I'm assuming my apartment wasn't near the scene of the storm, since no one back in NYC has called to tell me "oh, by the way, your apartment was hit by a tornado ..." I suppose I should keep my fingers crossed, though.

In other news: I'm adding more labels to posts. Labels follow the end of every blog entry and you can click on a label such as 'brooklyn' or 'weather' to get every post that has been labeled in the same fashion. It's a good way of reading through entries on the same topic.